The geometry of suspicious money laundering activities in financial networks

Abstract

Corruption and organized crime are social problems that affect different communities around the world, involving public and private organizations in diverse sectors and activities. However, these problems are global phenomena that transcend economic, cultural, and social borders, especially, when corrupt individuals use the global financial system to protect their illegal money. This paper aims to evaluate the money laundering mechanism in financial networks, studying the structure of some suspicious money laundering groups, and how they could be detected by the use of topological and geometrical considerations that avoid the need of possibly non-available (or restricted) information.