A mescla no crime de lavagem de dinheiro : os problemas da contaminação e da descontaminação em casos de transferências bancárias

Abstract

The present work aims to demonstrate the issues and theories developed thus far that seek to address the problem concerning the delimitation of the material object of the crime of money laundering when there is a blending of fungible funds of lawful and unlawful origin in a current account. At this juncture, the problem involves clearly determining the value of illicit provenance entering the agent's assets and subsequently defining the effects that this "tainted" value will have on the existing lawful amount. In essence, three effects have been identified: (i) the total contamination of lawful funds; (ii) partial contamination maintaining unlawfulness only over the initially tainted portion; and (iii) the decontamination of "tainted" funds. Therefore, this work is concerned with analyzing the main positive and negative factors generated by each of these effects in the context of the Brazilian legal system, along with an assessment of which would be the most suitable strategy for solving the problem.