TRADE-BASED MONEY LAUNDERING IN OUTER SPACE? IT'S MOST LIKELY ALREADY IN THE PLANNING STAGE

Last year, when I was invited to speak at the 2025 symposium on crime in Outer Space*, which will be held at the United States Naval Academy, I most certainly did not laugh. I sat down and considered which money laundering typologies could potentially be employed to clean the proceeds of terrestrial crime today in Earth's atmosphere, because we aren't talking about theory; I am speaking about what's probably on the minds of the most imaginative laundrymen, and has heretofore been ignored by not only the compliance community, but also law enforcement agencies. I am talking about using Trade-Based Money Laundering in planetary, and eventually, interstellar, trade.

Many of the commercial companies presently engaged in developing methods of transport aloft intend to offer their services to firms which plan on extracting minerals and other commodities from the resource-laden Asteroid belt, and there must certainly be mineral deposits on nearby planets and their moons. Closer to home, will salvage firms mine all that electronic junk flying around the Earth for usable material, just as maritime wrecks were plundered by pirates in the past?

All one must do is apply the current TBML typologies to these scenarios, especially since future payment methods, which might truly be offshore in a real way, could dwarf the ability of terrestrial law enforcement and regulatory agencies to control and interdict them? What if the financial institution involved is not only virtual, but is aloft? And where will the cleaned result be stored off-planet? As a lawyer, I can only think of subject-matter jurisdiction and venue issues galore with enforcement.

Perhaps those individuals who are far-sighted enough to have joined America's newest military branch, the US Space Force, might be tasked with enforcing whatever laws exist in 2075, to interdict inter-galactic TBML. We cannot say, but Future Crime, involving companies seeking to do business outside this planet, may already be in full force, thanks to laundrymen who intimately know trade-based money laundering, and are applying its dark principles, as we speak in 2024.
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* https://www.space-piracy.com