[ptaipale]

Well, "recent" is relative. Modern money laundering procedures started to develop in 1920's and 1930's; the proceeds of crime were hidden with banking schemes, and Meyer Lansky eventually even bought a Swiss bank to help do it for the American mob.

But I would guess that already ancient Chinese criminal gangs did something similar, to make the proceeds of illegal activities appear legal.

[splittist]

Money laundering is old. Money laundering being its own stand-alone crime is recent.

(And part of the modern trend of criminalizing the living of one's life in a way not maximally transparent to the government.)