of them being investigated, prosecuted and jailed seems to be lower than in a situation without tax
crime as predicate offence to money laundering due to overstretched resources in the private and the
public sector. One may ask the question whether it would be more efficient to re-allocate these re-
sources absorbed in the private and public sector (with the exception of the tax authorities) to all the
other predicate offences to money laundering once the automatic exchange of information (AEOI)
according to the common reporting standard (CRS) is in place. The working thesis in this paper is: yes.
Analysts in Financial Intelligence Units, prosecutors, judges, and compliance officers in financial in-
stitutions have to deal with different AML/CFT national acts and international initiatives. In chapter 2,
the legal framework of the international standard, being the FATF recommendations, the European
implementation of the international standard, being the 4™ Anti-Money Laundering Directive of the
EU, and the Egmont Group’s operational guidance for the Financial Intelligence Units will be ana-
lysed and tested from a practitioner’s point of view. In the second part of chapter 2, the legal imple-
mentation of FATF recommendation 3 in different countries will be analysed. In chapter 3, overarch-
ing legal issues triggered by FATF recommendation 3 are elaborated, while chapter 4 sheds light on
practical risks and presumably unwanted consequences when implementing FATF recommendation 3.
The concluding chapter is chapter 5, where the arguments in favour or against the inclusion of tax
crimes as predicate offences to ML will be summed up.
This thesis cannot and will not solve every problem that may arise in relation to the FATF recommen-
dations, the directives of the EU, and the national laws implementing both, but only a couple of them.
Additionally, this thesis is not a detailed and profound analysis of tax crimes as predicate offences to
ML from a criminal law perspective, nor is it an analysis at all from a tax law perspective.
