[cannaceo]

Laundry isn't always cash. Sometimes you've stolen funds from a government or through a banking scam. That money needs to travel through other businesses to be effectively cleaned.

For example, say you were in charge of a private equity fund with a close overlap of executives with a government bank. When investments go well you put them on the PE funds books. When they go poorly you put them on the bank's books. The bank gets a few government bailouts in the process. You now have billions in dirty funds in your PE fund that need to be laundered through investments. A few additional degrees of separation here can be very useful. I've seen this exact situation play out and met some of these guys while trying to do business in Africa.