YOUR article on the prison sentence given to a Barclays Bank worker for involvement in the laundering of £16 million has to be the tip of an iceberg that is conveniently ignored (“Five admit laundering £16m of cyber crime gang’s money through Barclays”, September 20).

It has been estimated that the UK illicit drug market turns over £6 billion a year yet there is under £20bn of hard cash in circulation. How does that hard cash held by a few individuals get back into circulation?

It was demonstrated when HSBC was fined $2bn for acting as a conduit for billions in Mexican drug money. Coupled with most money only existing in electronic form it is counter-intuitive to believe the banking system wittingly or otherwise does not play a major part in recycling the profits from illegal activity.

It is conveniently overlooked that the estimated $15 trillion of tax-avoidance cash supposedly squirrelled away in tax havens and reinvested back into the economy has to make use of the global banking system as there simply isn’t that amount of hard cash to be ferried about in envelopes.

I recently moved house and the hoops I have had to jump through to conform with “money-laundering” regulations are tiresome. I wonder how someone with hundreds of thousands or millions in dodgy money manages to get it into the system without help. Yet it must happen as it is estimated that the illegal drugs business accounts for nearly two per cent of global GDP.

David J Crawford,

85 Whittinghame Court,

1300 Great Western Road, Glasgow.