money laundering

(n.) the process of hiding the source of illegal income by processing it through a large-turnover ent-ty, who takes a premium from it, and then receiving the income from that ent-ty to avoid suspicion.

this definition has evolved to include any form of hiding income (or sources of income) in the interests of avoiding tax, although the problem posed by non-specific ‘cover-all’ statements means that it is open to loopholes because of the vast grey areas.

money laundering has been practised for over 6000 years, but the term itself comes from the prohibition era of american history.
if a public limited company were to pay its director fees or dividends through purchasing toy cars worth £1 each for @ £50,000 each from a foreign company (and listing them as real cars) owned by the receiving directors/shareholders so they get their money with minor taxation, that would be covered by the extended definition of money laundering.
1. when a group of criminal makes money out of illegal arms sales, smuggling, organized crime, drug trafficking, prost-tution rings, embezzlement, insider trading, bribery and computer fraud schemes hide how they make their money by disguising the sources, changing the form, or moving the funds to a place where they are less likely to attract attention.
2. when you wash your pants and there is still money inside them
money laundering is done on a world scale
something you unfortunately cannot learn to do by looking it up in a dictionary.

if you’ve come here to, just turn yourself over to the police and tell them where you got all the money. it’s probably for the better.
i got it, we’ll just launder the money! my junkie cousin used to do money laundering all the time.
when you wash your clothes and forget there’s money in the pockets.
don’t forget to empty your pockets—you don’t want to get arrested for money laundering.