The anti-money laundering department under the State Bank of Vietnam says that the laundering that is happening in the banking sector could be related to embezzlement by high-profile people, gambling and tax evasion.

A central bank report says that criminals often use bank accounts of different people to receive illegal money and to conceal the origins of illegal incomes.

There is also a high risk of money laundering happening in the real estate and unofficial remittance channels, the report says.

Criminals often ask family members to acquire and transfer properties to launder money. These transactions could be made with cash or direct banking transfers without going through real exchange trading floors, creating more challenges for authorities to track illegal money, the report adds.

Unofficial remittance is another popular method, as criminals do not have to state the purpose of the transfer and this procedure could be done easily.

All these factors mean that Vietnam has a high vulnerability to money laundering.

Other avenues that an average to low risk of money laundering in Vietnam are stocks, casinos and accounting, the report says.

In the 2010-2017 period, the anti-money laundering department received almost 7,300 reports on suspicious transactions. Almost half of them were transferred to authorities for investigation.