Predicate Offence
The crime that came first — the one that made the money dirty.
A predicate offence is the initial criminal act that generates illegal proceeds for the purpose of money laundering or to finance further criminal activity. Money laundering, by definition, requires a prior crime: the predicate. The same applies to terrorist financing. There is no laundering without something to launder.
Which offences qualify as predicates varies by jurisdiction, and that variation is operationally significant. FATF Recommendation 3 sets a baseline, designating categories of offences that member states must treat as predicates — but each state determines how those categories are defined in domestic legislation, which offences fall within them, and what evidentiary threshold establishes that the predicate was committed. A state may implement the Recommendation narrowly, excluding conduct that another jurisdiction would capture, without being formally non-compliant.
Where predicates are defined narrowly, or where the originating conduct was legal where the crime occurred, the money laundering charge becomes difficult or impossible to establish. In cross-border cases, this interacts directly with dual criminality: if the predicate conduct is not recognised as criminal in the requested state, mutual legal assistance may be refused, the asset trail goes cold, and the legal architecture quietly converts delay into impunity.
Definition drawn from FATF Glossary and AML/CFT Library (aml-cft.net).