In this case, the people are actually laundering money.
So-called anti-money laundering laws criminalize far more than money laundering, like financial privacy.
In any case, I would argue that the focus should be entirely on the crime that generates the illicit revenue, and not the after-the-fact laundering of the proceeds. When the focus is on the latter, laws are inevitably passed that mandate people to submit to warrantless surveillance of their financial transactions. The populace at large should not be made to sacrifice freedom and privacy in a largely futile attempt to track illicit criminal gains after the fact.
No useful money — i.e. no money that is unencumbered enough to be practical to use, and that provisions people with a modicum of protection against arbitrary state seizure — will give the state the ability to significantly prevent criminals from profiting from the proceeds of their crimes, merely by tracking and policing its flows.
So-called anti-money laundering laws criminalize far more than money laundering, like financial privacy.
In any case, I would argue that the focus should be entirely on the crime that generates the illicit revenue, and not the after-the-fact laundering of the proceeds. When the focus is on the latter, laws are inevitably passed that mandate people to submit to warrantless surveillance of their financial transactions. The populace at large should not be made to sacrifice freedom and privacy in a largely futile attempt to track illicit criminal gains after the fact.
No useful money — i.e. no money that is unencumbered enough to be practical to use, and that provisions people with a modicum of protection against arbitrary state seizure — will give the state the ability to significantly prevent criminals from profiting from the proceeds of their crimes, merely by tracking and policing its flows.