**2.5 Money laundering**

In order to find data on worldwide money laundering, we measure the money laundering deeds using the Basel AML (Basel Anti-Money Laundering) index

**Figure 6.**

*Percentage of value added tax (VAT) revenue lost in the European Union countries, in 2018. Source: European Commission [21].*

**Figure 7.**

*Tax evasion (% in GDP) in Romania, 2005–2017. Source: Own calculations based on data provided by the National Institute of statistics in Romania [22].*

which evaluates the risk of money laundering and terrorism funding. This score ranges between 0 meaning the lowest risk, to 7 meaning the highest risk of money laundering. From our calculations (**Figure 8**) we find that the average risk of money laundering in EU countries in the last eight years is of about 4. The money laundering crimes somehow differ to other types of crimes (such as corruption, shadow economy or tax evasion) because money launderings are more spread in rich countries where big transactions are conducted by rich and highly position situated entities, the so called "white collars", while corruption and shadow economy highly characterize poor countries [9]. Thus, we may see from the graph that the highest risk of money laundering is found in developed countries (Luxembourg, Greece, Italy, Germany, Austria) while the lowest risk of money laundering is found in Central and Eastern European countries such as Estonia, Slovenia, Lithuania. Although the general average values of AML risk scores are high, we may see a reduction of them in the last eight years, because of the efficiency of anti-money laundering regulations. However, in Romania, the risk of money laundering has started to increase since 2016 (**Figure 9**). Similar results at EU level are found by Cotoc (Bodescu) et al. [24] in their study conducted for several EU countries. They find that the number of suspicious transactions reports (STR) received by antimoney laundering national bodies and the volume of amount suspended, frozen or seized increased in the last period of time, as an effect of European Union measures and transposition of these within national laws.

#### **Figure 8.**

*The risk of money laundering in European Union countries, in average for the period 2012–2020. Source: Own calculations based on Basel AML index [23].*

#### **Figure 9.**

*The evolution of the money laundering risk in the European Union countries, 2012–2020. Source: Own calculations based on Basel AML index [23].*
