Criminal Investigation of Money Laundering in the Practice of the Financial Intelligence Unit of the State Investigation and Protection Agency

Money laundering is an illegal activity aimed at concealing the real origin of property gains and presenting the verse as legally acquired income. Preventing the detection and proving of money laundering encompasses a whole range of activities carried out during the criminal investigation. As a special legal institute, a financial investigation was introduced, which enabled the determination of the property of both suspects and third parties. This paper aims to present the activities related to the criminal investigation of money laundering in the practice of the Financial Intelligence Department of the State Investigation and Protection Agency. When it comes to methods, the general scientific methods will use the statistical method needed in data processing to describe and analyze the results of research, and content analysis as a method of data collection. The results of the research show the frequency of reporting suspicious transactions and the establishment of international cooperation, the number of evidentiary actions taken, the number of submitted reports on conducted financial investigations, as well as the number of submitted reports on the commission of money laundering. The conclusion based on this paper indicates the importance of the existence of a central financial intelligence department that undertakes various activities, from receiving reports of suspicious transactions, through actions aimed at obtaining evidence and financial investigations, to establishing international cooperation and reporting on the crime of money laundering. In that way, a more efficient system of preventing, detecting, and proving the crime of money laundering has been established.