<P> Bank employees, such as tellers and customer account representatives, are trained in anti-money laundering and are instructed to report activities that they deem suspicious . Additionally, anti-money laundering software filters customer data, classifies it according to level of suspicion, and inspects it for anomalies . Such anomalies include any sudden and substantial increase in funds, a large withdrawal, or moving money to a bank secrecy jurisdiction . Smaller transactions that meet certain criteria may also be flagged as suspicious . For example, structuring can lead to flagged transactions . The software also flags names on government "blacklists" and transactions that involve countries hostile to the host nation . Once the software has mined data and flagged suspect transactions, it alerts bank management, who must then determine whether to file a report with the government . </P> <P> The financial services industry has become more vocal about the rising costs of anti-money laundering regulation and the limited benefits that they claim it brings . One commentator wrote that "(w) ithout facts, (anti-money laundering) legislation has been driven on rhetoric, driving by ill - guided activism responding to the need to be "seen to be doing something" rather than by an objective understanding of its effects on predicate crime . The social panic approach is justified by the language used--we talk of the battle against terrorism or the war on drugs ". The Economist magazine has become increasingly vocal in its criticism of such regulation, particularly with reference to countering terrorist financing, referring to it as a "costly failure", although it concedes that other efforts (like reducing identity and credit card fraud) may still be effective at combating money laundering . </P> <P> There is no precise measurement of the costs of regulation balanced against the harms associated with money laundering, and given the evaluation problems involved in assessing such an issue, it is unlikely that the effectiveness of terror finance and money laundering laws could be determined with any degree of accuracy . The Economist estimated the annual costs of anti-money laundering efforts in Europe and North America at US $5 billion in 2003, an increase from US $700 million in 2000 . Government - linked economists have noted the significant negative effects of money laundering on economic development, including undermining domestic capital formation, depressing growth, and diverting capital away from development . Because of the intrinsic uncertainties of the amount of money laundered, changes in the amount of money laundered, and the cost of anti-money laundering systems, it is almost impossible to tell which anti-money laundering systems work and which are more or less cost effective . </P> <P> Besides economic costs to implement anti-money - laundering laws, improper attention to data protection practices may entail disproportionate costs to individual privacy rights . In June 2011, the data - protection advisory committee to the European Union issued a report on data protection issues related to the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, which identified numerous transgressions against the established legal framework on privacy and data protection . The report made recommendations on how to address money laundering and terrorist financing in ways that safeguard personal privacy rights and data protection laws . In the United States, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have expressed concern that money laundering rules require banks to report on their own customers, essentially conscripting private businesses "into agents of the surveillance state". </P>

Which organisations have been known to launder money in the past