Minenko S. Transformation of the system of combating the legalization of criminal income in the conditions of digitalization of the national economy

The dissertation is devoted to solving the current scientific problem of improving the theoretical and methodological foundations of the functioning of the system for countering the legalization of criminal income in the conditions of digitalization of the economy. The dissertation examines modern methods of legalization of income obtained illegally, considering the active development of digitization processes. Two groups of legalization methods were distinguished, according to the degree of influence of digitalization on them. The first group, which was almost unaffected by digitization, included: smuggling, use of insurance companies, use of pawnshops. The second group, which is significantly affected by digitalization, includes: the use of payment systems, conversion centers, the use of banking institutions, and the use of virtual assets. A bibliographic analysis of the concept of «anti-legalization of income» was carried out, which made it possible to highlight the relevant relationships between the categories of scientific research, which confirmed the relevance of the dissertation work. So, much research is devoted to combating the legalization of illegal income and cryptocurrencies, blockchain, neural networks, databases, assessing the risk of legalization of illegal income, digitalization. Based on the content analysis of existing studies devoted to the legalization of criminal proceeds, the author's concept of «anti-money laundering in the conditions of digitalization» is defined, which is proposed to be interpreted as a set of information and technological measures for the prevention, detection and further punishment of criminal actions aimed at disguising the illegal origin of funds or other property or their possession, as well as the acquisition or use of funds or other property in order to give a legitimate appearance to their use or distribution or actions aimed at concealing the sources of their origin, as well as committing a financial transaction with such funds or other property, provided that the person is aware that they were obtained by criminal means. The main stages of the development of the international system of combating the legalization of illegally obtained incomes were studied. Three critical points were identified in which the system of counteracting the legalization of illegal income underwent significant changes. Namely, the first transformative change: the adoption of the European Convention on the Extradition of Offenders, which essentially launched a system of combating the legalization of illegally obtained income at the international level. The second transformational change: the creation of specialized international organizations, the adoption of the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Seizure and Confiscation of Illegally Obtained Income − the global system of combating the legalization of illegally obtained income is structured close to its current form. The third transformational change: the adoption of a risk-oriented approach to combating the legalization of income obtained illegally, which corresponds to the trend of intellectualization and interdisciplinary combating of crime. The impact of digitalization on the activity of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of state power has been studied. The basic principles of the organization of public authority, ensuring its transparency under the influence of digitalization are determined. Based on canonical analysis, the strength of the relationship between digitalization indicators and indicators of the quality of public administration was quantitatively assessed. It was established that there is a direct correlation between the level of development of digitalization and the effectiveness of governance. The importance of digitization for the system of combating the legalization of income obtained illegally was determined. Through the construction of a utility function, in which the first alternative was the share of criminal offenses related to the legalization of illegal income, which were investigated, which corresponds to one report on a financial transaction that was submitted to the State Financial Monitoring Service, and the second alternative was the indicator of digitalization of the economy, the number of active Internet users in Ukraine. Relationships between the determinants of the process of combating the legalization of illegally obtained income have been established. Based on structural modeling, functional relationships were established between indicators of financial services market regulation, law enforcement, judicial activities, and digitalization. According to the results of the study, it was found that digitalization has a direct impact on the level of development of the law enforcement system and the regulation of the financial services market and the opposite effect on the judicial system.