Rocha, Miguel TrindadeFirmino, Filipa Susana Valentim2012-05-112012-05-112011http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/8368In the last years stricter legislation were implemented worldwide in what matters to money laundering. Covered entities are obliged to comply with several rules to prevent and detect money laundering situations. The purpose of this dissertation is to find out the level of investment and effectiveness of anti-­‐ money laundering system of Portuguese banks. Costs incurred by banks to prevent and detect situations of money laundering as well as the effectiveness of the investment made were approached in this dissertation. In order to approach the goal of this dissertation Portuguese banks were interviewed. It was found that Portuguese banks have been investing highly during the last five years, although it is forecasted a slight decrease in the near future. Legal factors but mainly by banks to explain investment growth. Regarding with effectiveness was found out that banks use risk based approach system with relatively low percentage of false positives. Increased investment was followed by increasing in the number of suspicious transaction reported by banks. However the number of transactions that were actually confirmed as suspicious by authorities did not follow the same path. This fact is possible explained by the fact that banks were passing from the boom of the investment over these last years though they are not yet in the peak of effectiveness that they can approach.engmaster thesis