Lavagem de dinheiro e sistemas alternativos de remessa: subsídios para a investigação criminal

Abstract

Money laundering is a criminal phenomenon that generates harmful effects on society. Crime is consummated through the incidence of methods, trends and techniques on the dirty product in order to hide it. These sets of artifices are called typologies. Within the broad spectrum of typologies that money launderers use to make the product of illicit origin look legal, Alternative Remittance Systems (ARS) stand out, mechanisms that are used worldwide to send efficiently, quickly and unbureaucratic, values from one country to another. Historically, ARS have been constituted as legal instruments of remittance of values, mainly because they reach the places of poor financial and electronic infrastructure, where the financial institutions have little economic interest in acting, or conflicting places, where the presence of the State is not evident. Despite this humanitarian bias, ARS are also widely used as instruments for laundering money because their characteristics serve as concealment purposes. ARS are systems composed of several methods, with Hawala being the best known of them worldwide. In Brazil, this mechanism is known as “dólar-cabo”. Sending money abroad via “dólar-cabo” is a crime of currency evasion and can be a crime of money laundering. Generally, these crimes are investigated by the Federal Police's financial crime enforcement units that lack scientific material to support investigative activity, mainly due to the absence of case studies. The main objective of this study was to identify and gather investigative elements related to the crime of money laundering that uses Alternative Remittance Systems as instruments to conceal or disguise the illicit product to serve as a guide for criminal investigation activity. In theoretical terms, the research was supported by theories on money laundering and on the typology of Alternative Remittance Systems, especially that of the world-renowned Hawala method, and of the “dólar-cabo”, a widespread method in Brazil. As for scientific methods and procedures, the qualitative approach was used, using techniques of documentary research, literature review, argumentative analysis and content analysis. The results made it possible to compile investigative elements that could guide the investigator in the criminal investigation activity. From the results, as a technological product, a compilation of guidelines and illustrative schemes was prepared, serving as didactic material to be disseminated in the professional training courses of the Federal Police and in the Research and Financial Analysis Courses of the National Police Academy. The research was developed within Line 2 - Technology, innovation and operations in the public sector.