Money Laundering and Racketeering (History Coursework)

Money Laundering and Racketeering
Student’s Name
Institution
Money Laundering and Racketeering
Question:
Examine the implication that money laundering and racketeering has had on society and assess the various strategies used to counter organized crimes.
Organized crime has been heavily linked with the Prohibition era in the early 20th century, even though criminal activities existed before the period (Shore, 2016). Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Bugs Moran, and Roger Touhy are some of the most famous gangsters of the Prohibition era. Other than the bootlegging business, these gangsters engaged in other illegal dealings, also known as racketeering, which has since been part and parcel of the contemporary society. The different manifestations of racketeering familiar with the Prohibition era include money laundering, sex trafficking, prostitution, and gambling. Some of the organized crime offenses have revolutionized, leading to the emergence of other racketeer activities like corruption, cyber fraud, extortion, kidnapping, and even fencing rackets. Racketeering has negative implications for society as a whole, with security and economy having a fair share of the impacts. Strategies have been put in place to curb the different manifestations of racketeering and organized crime in general.
The economic system is the most immediate casualty of organized crimes. Gangsters, with their illegitimate powers, use all sorts of evil deeds to gain monopoly into a business venture. Intimidation, coercion, and bribery are some of the techniques that racketeers deploy to dominate the economy. Money laundering, a common attribute of the racketeers, has serious implications on the country’s economy. Money laundering puts the entire economy under the control of criminal enterprises in pursuit of their interest, thus jeopardizing the economy (Hendriyetty & Grewal, 2017). Besides, money launderers greatly affect the financial institutions, with the capability of influencing the interest rates and currencies, which not only affects the country's economy but the global economy. Criminal enterprises can easily evade taxation through their illegitimate and dubious means, further plunging the economy into undesirable conditions.
Racketeers not o...