BBC News | Investigating Al-Qaeda

Whether money starts out as illegal or not, at some point it will have to pass through a bank. Laws in most countries now require them to make sure they know who their customers are - no anonymity allowed - and report suspicious transactions. In answer to the pressure of new laws, a group of the world's biggest banks is establishing its own private investigator, Regulatory Data Corp (RDC), to make sure.

The problem is knowing just what activity might be suspicious. Government regulations requiring reporting when significant sums of money are transferred can easily be evaded by smurfing - splitting a large transaction into a series of smaller, less noticeable chunks. The sheer volume of transactions, the billions of dollars flowing daily through banking networks, adds to the problem.

Clever computer software involving artificial intelligence may help sort out suspicious patterns of transactions, but the jury is still out on whether the programs are really up to the task.

Leading commercial banks backing RDC include:
JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, Bank of America

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