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The lucrative enterprise of money laundering, the threat it poses to the integrity and stability of financial sectors as well as to the democratic societies themselves, and the means to counteract it, all have long been the object of academic debate across the globe. However, interested parties in Israel, such as law enforcement agencies, banks and legal scholars, have not played a vociferous role in this debate, and Parliament for its part has refrained so far from introducing anti‐money‐laundering legislation. Recently a Bill entitled ‘Prohibition of Money Laundering’ (‘the Bill’) has been introduced to the Israeli Parliament. The Bill has passed first reading, and it is cur‐rently being debated in the committee stage before being brought to second and third readings. It is not unlikely that the Bill will crystallise into legislation in the near future. The proposed legislation bears far‐reaching legal, economic and policy implications. It is thus surprising that it has not sparked off an extensive debate in the legal literature. This paper will, hopefully, aid in stimulating such a debate.

The Financial Action Task Force (the chief international agency against money laundering) blacklisted Israel (June 2000) as one of the 15 countries that fail to cooperate in the international efforts to combat money laundering. Soon after, the Israeli Parliament enacted the Prohibition on Money Laundering Law, 5760–2000 (the ‘Law’). The Law has far‐reaching legal, economic and policy implications. This paper attempts to sketch the global backdrop against which the Law was adopted, analyse its provisions, expose its implications and draw attention to its pros and cons. It is structured along the following lines: the first section sets out the international campaign against money laundering. The second section describes the pressures exerted by the international community to persuade Israel to join the club of countries that counteract money‐laundering operations. The third and fourth sections analyse the ratio legis of the Law and its provisions, respectively. In the fifth section an account is provided of the problematic aspects of the Law. The last section provides some conclusions that may be drawn at this early stage.