Summary

For the Prosecutor’s Office, the prevention of money laundering and the financing of terrorism (hereinafter referred to as anti-money laundering) is an area in which the quality of procedural decisions depends directly on the data and information sources used and how they are assembled into a coherent body of evidence. In today’s information society, the challenge is no longer a lack of information, but an overabundance of it. Information overload is a situation in which the amount of available information exceeds a person’s capacity to process and understand it and apply it in decision-making. Information overload makes it more difficult to distinguish reliable sources from unreliable ones, obscures meaningful connections, and increases the risk of erroneous decisions. In the context of anti-money laundering, this means that investigators must distinguish, from a vast body of data, the information that has evidentiary or analytical value in the specific case. In that regard, the data are dispersed across various registers, financial flows, and cross-border connections. If relevant information is overlooked or not connected with other information, information blindness arises. This article focuses on three questions. First, which information sources are used in practice in anti-money laundering. Second, how information blindness manifests itself when data are abundant but the logic governing their use is inconsistent. Third, what analytical toolbox does the Prosecutor’s Office need to transform data into well-reasoned decisions. Although the discussion focuses on the field of money laundering, the challenge of managing large volumes of data is also characteristic of other complex criminal proceedings.