First, the cash is physically disposed of in domestic banks, other types of formal or informal financial institutions, foreign financial institutions, or used to buy high-value goods, such as artwork, precious metals and stones that can then be resold for payment. Then, the money goes through a series of financial transactions to separate it from its source and disguise its audit trail. For example, money can be hidden through a wire transfer of deposited cash, the conversion of deposited cash into bonds, stocks, traveler’s checks, etc., or the investment of cash in real estate, leisure and tourism industries, or other legitimate businesses. Finally, the money is made to seem legitimate by using front companies to "lend" the money back to the owner, using funds on deposit in foreign financial institutions as security for domestic loans, or producing false invoices for goods sold across borders.

It is estimated that $300 to $500 billion is laundered each year in proceeds from serious crime. If left unchecked, money laundering could corrupt the financial system and hinder the development of emerging markets. Any country integrated into the international financial system is at risk. Efforts by governments to fight and prosecute money laundering have been going on for the past fifteen years in organizations such as The Vienna Convention of December 1988, The 1990 Council of Europe Convention, Basle Committee on Banking Supervision of December 1988, The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), and The Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

It is suspected that up to $10 billion has been channeled by Russian businesses, individuals, and crime organizations through the Bank of New York, the United States’ fifteenth largest bank. Russian immigrant Peter Berlin, who became a United Sates citizen in 1996, managed to move $7.5 billion (an average of 6 million per day) through eight accounts in the Bank of New York over a three year period. This was not investigated, however, because Berlin’s wife Lucy Edwards was a bank officer who vouched for these transactions. Since then, the Bank of New York has implemented an anti-money laundering system (in addition to the already standing "know-your customer-requirements") in which a committee reviews suspicious accounts and customer activity and discerns whether they are to be closed and filed with the government.

In a more recent chapter of the scandal, Russian businessman Semion Mogilevich, an alleged mobster at the head of a global crime organization headquartered in Hungary, is under suspicion of being at the center of a plot to launder $15 billion in Russian mob proceeds through he Bank of New York. Mogilevich, of course, denies this, claiming that he has nothing to do with the mob or the plot, and that the scandal is ruining business for him. He maintains that he has been unfairly targeted by investigators because he is "A convenient target who looks the part." Mogilevich, who has been the center of other investigations, even denies that there is a Russian underworld.

The laundered money is believed to have come from Russian organized crime, the International Monetary Fund, or Internal Aid Packages. Yet, there is no proof of any of this. It travels from Benex International Co., the company at the center of the investigation through whose accounts it is said $4.85 billion gone. (Lucy Edwards is allegedly an officer of Benex. Berlin and Alexsey Volkov are accused of having Benex accounts.) From Benex, the money goes back and forth from Benex accounts to accounts at the Bank of New York. Then it goes to larger international banks such as Deutsche Bank, Swiss bank, UBS, and other unspecified banks in Australia, China, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Among major suspects are Svetlana Kudryavtsev, a recently fired Bank of New York worker and associate of Lucy Edwards. Other suspects include Edwards herself, her husband Berlin, Natasha Kagalovsky, who is linked with both the Bank of New York an the Russian mob, her husband, Konstantin Kagalovsky, chairman of the large Russian oil company, Yukos Oil, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of Yukos who did business with the Bank of New York, and Semion Mogilevich, the alleged central figure in Russian organized crime, accused of arms trafficking and running prostitution rings.