Money Laundering

Abstract

If the best guess of the world expenditure on illicit drugs is correct ($500 billion a year), this amounts to an astonishing $100 for every one of the world’s population. Most of it, however (at least $300 billion), is spent by the tens of millions of regular users on the affluent streets of the West, the typical addict spending $50,000–100,000 a year on the habit, of which 90 per cent is criminally acquired from theft and fraud.