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Financial crimes, including money laundering and terrorist financing, are not a primary focus of the Lao government, nor do they appear at the moment to be a pressing problem in Laos. The conditions are, however, ripe for exploitation. Laos operates on a largely cash economy, has relatively porous borders, weak central banking controls, and unsophisticated law enforcement and banking sectors. One reason why financial crimes do not seem urgent, is that so little is known about the true picture of money flows into and out of the country. The most significant known source of illegal capital is proceeds from drugs, which may amount to between $70-80 million in revenue for traffickers per year, followed by illegal logging. There have also been discoveries of counterfeit U.S. currency and the occasional seizing of large sums of cash in a briefcase at the airport. But this appears to be the extent of active monitoring by the government of potentially illegal financial flows.

The Lao government is beginning to take measures aimed at prevention. It has signed the UN Treaties on drugs and transnational crime, which define measures to combat money laundering and seizing proceeds of illicit activity. Laos is also working to create a Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) at the central bank with authority to coordinate and monitor anti-money laundering policies. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Asian Development Bank have been giving technical assistance to the Lao government to build capacity and increase compliance in the area of financial crimes.

But there is a long way to go. The law forming the FIU, an anti-money laundering law, an anti-terrorist financing law, and revisions to the penal code that would criminalize related acts of laundering and bribery are still in draft phase, and little information was available as to the specific content of the drafts or the timing of their enactment.