In recent years, the worldwide effort to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism has assumed heightened importance. Money laundering and the financing of terrorism are global problems that not only threaten security, but also compromise the stability, transparency, and efficiency of financial systems, thus undermining economic prosperity. In the last decades a global trend has been observed in which a certain syndrome of anti-social conduct is viewed as particularly undermining the social fabric of the countries concerned and contextually menacing the global order. Because of the threat to domestic public order, such crimes are defined as “serious crimes”. Moreover, because of the menace posed in the international scenario such crimes are also considered “transnational crimes”. The issue of which crimes should fall within such category of crimes is a matter that goes beyond the scope of our work. However, after the enactment of the UN Transnational Organized Crime Convention 2000, there is a general consensus in the international community that money laundering is both serious and transnational in nature. More recently, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, a relatively new phenomenon is usually associated (rightly or wrongly) with money laundering: terrorist financing. Although money laundering as criminal conduct is different from terrorist financing (for instance, all money laundering schemes involve ill gotten funds, whereas in terrorist financing scheme a terrorist organization may be financed through both ill-gotten funds as well as perfectly licit money), many countries throughout the world have found it worthwhile to extend their anti-money laundering regimes to terrorism financing.