Reported by Albert Hadi

(Summary featured below. To read full report, go to: https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/24/how-criminal-networks-launder-money-out-of-the-united-states/)

The essay argues that the United States is not just a destination for illicit money but a central transit and exit hub for global criminal finance. Trillions of dollars are laundered worldwide each year, and the scale, stability, and openness of the U.S. financial system make it uniquely attractive to sophisticated criminal networks. Laundering is portrayed not as an auxiliary activity, but as a core operational function that allows criminal and terrorist organizations to survive, scale, and protect leadership.

Criminals move money overseas to reduce exposure to U.S. law enforcement, exploit jurisdictions with weaker controls, and place assets beyond the reach of seizure. Once funds leave the U.S., they are layered through additional jurisdictions and transactions to further obscure ownership and origin. International standards bodies and academic research consistently show that anonymity, weak beneficial ownership rules, and regulatory fragmentation drive these cross-border flows.

The actors involved extend far beyond street-level criminals. Modern laundering networks include drug cartels, cybercrime syndicates, sanctions evaders, corrupt officials, and—critically—professional enablers such as lawyers, accountants, corporate service providers, and trade intermediaries. These facilitators operate in the gray zone between legal commerce and criminal finance, designing structures that exploit regulatory blind spots while maintaining a veneer of legitimacy.

The essay details six dominant laundering methods used to move money out of the U.S.: informal value transfer systems like hawala; abuse of charities and nonprofits; shell companies enabled by weak corporate transparency; trade-based money laundering through falsified invoices; bulk cash smuggling; and increasingly, cryptocurrency and digital asset laundering. Each method exploits scale, complexity, or opacity to bypass traditional detection mechanisms, often blending seamlessly with lawful economic activity.

The central conclusion is that laundering out of the United States is a national security issue, not merely a compliance failure. Enforcement history shows that illicit finance is sustained by organized, service-based laundering networks that sell concealment as a repeatable product. Disrupting individual transactions or seizing assets is insufficient; effective countermeasures must dismantle the infrastructure that makes laundering scalable, resilient, and adaptable in the first place.