A Comparative Study of Crime of Money Laundering under Islamic Jurisprudence, Iranian Law and International Instruments

Money laundering is a phenomenon that has been introduced to the world as an organized and transnational crime in recent decades. Resorting the international conventions in this field, the Iranian legislator through adopting the Anti Money-Laundering Act in February 2008, maintained a comprehensive criminal policy as to confronting it. In a simple definition, money laundering is defined as the operation carried out by the perpetrators of crimes in order to legitimate their illegal financial conducts resulting from committing the offences. As with jurisprudential foundations, many ayahs, narrations and jurisprudential rules could be referred to. This crime is a secondary one that means deliberate concealment of the nature and origin of the properties attained from commitment of such offences. The high rate of money laundering at global level, its organized and transnational character and lack of certain victim, have increased the significance of criminalizing this phenomenon in the world as well as in Iran. To this end, a bill is being adopted for combating money laundering in Iran that its final legislative phases has not been passed up to date. There exist numerous international and regional instruments on money laundering most significant of which are 1988 Vienna Convention, 1990 Council of Europe Convention, 1991 European Directive, 2000 Palermo Convention, and 2003 Anti-Corruption Convention. The goal of enactment of these instruments is to making the operation of money laundering an expensive endeavor in order to tighten its field as much as possible. In spite of the partial non-compliance of the legislator in Islamic Republic of Iran' with international practice as regards physical behaviors of money laundering, through an accurate interpretation of the Anti Money-Laundering Act, this conclusion is appeared that there is no difference as to money laundering in Iran and international practice in terms of its conditions and circumstances.