Scope of Criminal Liability under section 5 of The Anti-Money Laundering Act B.E. 2542

Abstract

Money laundering is a process of converting money or property derived from criminal activities into a legitimate source which may cause broad impacts on the business section, social and economic system. Therefore, the state should criminalize such an action to break the cycle of the crime. However, the number of these criminal cases proceeded by the Anti-Money Laundering Office is significantly low compared to the civil forfeiture, even though during the proceeding of civil forfeiture, the authority should involve in illegal properties and should foresee criminals who are related to the illegal properties. One of the reasons for this problem is a lack of understanding of the money laundering offence. In addition, it is also unclear in the offence how broad the interpretation of money laundering offence is.

Therefore, this article aims to study the scope of money laundering offence under section 5 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act B.E. 2542 by studying the problem of enforcement, the concept and intention of that offence especially section 5 (3) and the definition of criminal property that amended in 2015 and analyzing the scope and legislation of money laundering offence according to international standard to seek appropriate scope to amend theAnti-Money Laundering Act B.E. 2542 more effectively.