Abstract
The presented article deals with the issue of the delict of legalisation of proceeds from crime (the criminal act of money laundering). As the first article of this type in the Czech criminal law science it discusses in detail if, from the perspective of de lege lata as well as de lege ferenda, the offender of the so-called main crime, that is the crime, from which the illegal means have come, should be responsible for the crime of money laundering, too.
It needs to be accentuated that this issue is very topical in terms of the European context as well, because the approach differs in the individual countries. A noticeable trend in the recent years is to punish even the so-called self-laundering, too.
The comparative explanation includes a comparison of the legal regulations in France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, using relevant Italian, German, Spanish, Swiss and Polish literature. The author inclines to the view, which is clearly minority in the Czech theory, that the offender of a criminal act of money laundering cannot be legally responsible for the main act of crime as well.
The main argument is see in the nature of the behaviour cinsisting in money laundering, which can be called post factum. In addition, punishment of the offender of a criminal act, from which illegal proceeds have come, for money laundering at the same time gets into conflict with the principle of forbidding forced self-accusation (nemo tenetur se ipsum accusare) and the principle of ne bis in idem.