ABSTRACT
Today there seems to be a broad consensus that a complex financial investigation followed by seizure of illegal assets is the most powerful tool both to control crime and, increasingly, to preempt terror. In reality economically motivated crimes are largely the work of individuals and small groups who engage in arms-length transactions of an opportunistic nature and generate modest profits. Some part of profits may be dissipated in consumption of legal or illegal goods and services. Furthermore "infiltration" of criminal money into the legal economy may not always be such a bad thing. Advocates of the anti-proceeds strategy sometimes cite the pioneering example of Italy's 1982 Pio La Torre law. Certainly that law tried to prevent illegal money from taking control of legal businesses with a view to enhancing profit by applying criminal methods; it also sought to prevent legally-earned money from investing in the higher returns available in the criminal economy.
