Gagytė, Greta

The number of enforcement actions and fines for non-compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) regulations continues climbing year after year, and the year 2021 was no exception to this tendency. Globally, authorities remain harsh, and AML fines in Europe, the United States, and the United Kingdom have been increasing (Global Anti-Money Laundering Regulations, 2021). According to the UN estimations, the amount of money annually laundered worldwide amounts to 2–5% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or in absolute numbers - to 800 billion-2 trillion US dollars. Such high figures indicate that national governments are indeed facing a serious problem of money laundering. In this article, clustering is employed to group the EU member states by their money laundering measuring indices in order to assess the EU legal framework in terms of money laundering prevention. State clustering could help the relevant EU institutions, such as Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), Europol, International Monetary Fund (IMF), national governments and others, to develop the most effective measures to diminish the problem of money laundering and to complement their regulatory framework. Money laundering is usually associated with criminal activities that generate large amounts of illegal financial resources. In the most general sense, money laundering refers to the process of disguising the true origin, ownership, disposal and movement of particular proceeds, property or property rights. The results of the empirical research propose that money laundering reduction calls for a higher number of suspicious transaction reports (STRs), lower levels of corruption and improvement of the legal framework in terms of money laundering prevention in the EU. The research methods cover comparative and systematic literature analysis, and hierarchical cluster analysis. The cluster analysis of the EU member states (28 countries) uses the number of reports filled with FIU between 2006-2014, the 2012-2020 Basel AML Index and the 1998-2018 CPI data.

Money laundering is the process of hiding or disguising the unlawful origin of property and hiding or disguising the true nature, origin, source, location, disposal, ownership or title of property. In other words, money laundering means “laundering” dirty money until it becomes clean. Corrupt officials and other criminals use money laundering techniques to hide the true nature of their income. Research shows that cigarette smuggling is linked to money laundering. The purpose of the article is to determine how money laundering is related to cigarette smuggling and which public authorities have a key role in combating these phenomena in Georgia and Serbia. Methods used in the study: literature analysis and focus group methodology. In addition, the EU member states were clustered into three categories by their HDI, CPI, GDP per capita and transaction reports indicators. Clustering indicated that the states attributed to the third cluster are most vulnerable to money laundering. An effective factor in the fight against smuggling is to increase the population’s intolerance to illicit goods and services, therefore, it will seek to extend the empirical study to the population’s perspective on money laundering and cigarette smuggling.

Corruption is one of the oldest human problems that poses a serious threat to the process o f economic growth. Corruption in recent decades has been highlighted in many studies. Some corruption studies were focused on the decline of economic indicators, other studies have shown that corruption can increase economic efficiency. Later studies were performed using statistical analysis. The purpose o f this article is to assess the level of corruption in Lithuania, identifying the main factors of the emergence of the shadow economy. Having analysed the level o f corruption in Lithuania, it was found that in Lithuania between 1999 and 2016, the corruption perception index reached an average of 4.96 points, therefore, it can be argued that Lithuania laces large corruption problems and is not able to bring down corruption.