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Money Laundering, Lenity, GAAP, and the Narrowest Grounds

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

Understatement of the day award goes to Justice Samuel Alito: "There are no generally accepted accounting principles for determining the net income of illegal enterprises...." United States v. Santos, No. 06-1005 (today) (dissent). The splintered opinion involves more interesting issues than I had thought, and we now have an idea why it took a rare nine months from oral argument to opinion. We have the meaning of an ambiguous word in a statute, the rule of lenity, interpretation of splintered opinions, and the practical realities of organized crime prosecution. In 18 U.S.C. §1956, Congress made it a crime to do a variety of things with the "proceeds" of a variety of crimes. Is that gross or net? Is it "receipts" or "profits"? Congress did not say in the statute, nor is there a clue in the legislative history, for those who consider that non-bunk...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on June 02, 2008 (boomark / email).