Prevention and Suppression of Money Laundering in Private Banking Activities

Banking institutions that segment their clients, primarily based on the amount of their net assets, offer those in their upper bracket a specialized and personalized wealth management and structuring service, both from the perspective of investment objectives and tax obligations to the Public Treasury. Confidentiality and the offering of tailored products govern the banking activity known as Private Banking. The opacity that characterizes this business relationship often leads criminal organizations to use this channel to redirect money from illicit activities into the legal economy. In this sense, the client admission policy in the private banking segment, due to its higher-than-average risk, requires stricter measures. The crime of money laundering is therefore susceptible to commission, even more so considering that many clients transfer their profits to tax havens through banking networks, offshore jurisdictions that facilitate the concealment of beneficial ownership in the customer identification process at the beginning of the business relationship. Hence the increased risk that requires substantiating the criminalization and prevention of money laundering. The subject of our research is the prevention and repression of money laundering in this banking sector. We must first distinguish between the concepts of money laundering prevention, which is defined in Law 10/2010 and refers to actions aimed at preventing important economic sectors, such as financial institutions, from being used for money laundering. In this case, the law is not punitive in nature, unlike its repression; in other words, it does not seek to penalize the aforementioned money laundering, but rather to prevent certain institutions from being used for this purpose. Regarding repression, through its classification in the penal code, within the heading "Receiving and other similar conduct", it is intended to punish criminal conduct, which is composed of two basic actions, on the one hand, the source or underlying crime and on the other, the activity that has the purpose of carrying out the action of giving a legal appearance to the goods from the source crime. On the other hand, we must consider the attribution of criminal liability to legal entities, and their exemption provided they have appropriate organizational and management models. To do this, we must take into account Article 31 bis of our Criminal Code. In this regard, it is the legal entity's responsibility to prove that its organizational and management models meet the legal conditions and requirements, and it is the prosecution's responsibility to prove that the crime was committed under the circumstances established in Article 31 bis, paragraph 1. It is also important to note that it is important to prove the legal entity's willingness to comply with regulations and to what extent the crime represents only a one-off event outside its ethical culture.