ABSTRACT
After 11 September 2001, it was clear to all that the principle of Iree circulation of capital is not absolute: if the financial flows are used to finance, or derive from, activities of terrorism or organised crime, they must be detected and intercepted. The financial war on terrorism, which was born of the experience of the international war against drugs and organised crime, in progress for at least the past two decades, was instituted on the basis of four fundamental assumptions. Thus, the mechanisms and channels that permit the financing of terrorism do not perfectly coincide with those for the laundering of capital from organised crime but may overlap and intermingle with them. Fiscal arbitrage and money-laundering operations are also transnational phenomena. There is a widespread consensus on the damaging nature of financial flows produced by crime.
