The article does not say if the Girl Guides took the money. Reginald Forester-Smith, a society photographer who served eight yearsįrom 1999 for sexually abusing three girls, over two decades, one of Trouble is, the cash comes from the estate of notorious paedophile IMAGINE the moral dilemma at Girl Guide HQ where a pounds 400,000 Transactions until the 'dirty money' appears 'clean.'Īddressing specifically the question of smell: Sometimes by wiring or transferring through numerous accounts.įinally, it is integrated into the financial system through additional Then, the money is moved around to create confusion, Illegitimate funds are furtively introduced into the legitimateįinancial system. Involves three steps: placement, layering and integration. Money laundering is the process of making illegally-gained proceeds This article quotes the Unted States Treasury Department: We have the phrases dirty money and money laundering. The United States Supreme Court recently overturned the conviction of an ex-governor, but used the word 'tawdry' to describe his actions in accepting gifts from a constituent. This does not necessarily mean that people will not take dirty or smelly money, just that they will rationalize their actions. Some sources of money do stink, in the eyes of the law and in the opinions of many people. The closest phrase is probably Hold your nose and take the money, which is explained below. My answer offers evidence that there may not be an equivalent saying in English today. Pecunia non olet,-a Roman emperor said that.The origin of the saying was about a tax on urine. Wells, the narrator, Ponderevo uses the phrase to justify joining his uncle's business selling an ineffective and mildly harmful quack medicine: '. and true too was my uncle's proposition that the quickest way to get wealth was to sell the cheapest thing possible in the dearest bottle. and in any case, who cares about filthy lucre?', one of the assembled captains murmurs ' Non olet'. In The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian, when James Saumarez, 1st Baron de Saumarez is speaking of 'glory to be picked up in the Baltic. In London Fields by Martin Amis, while smelling a wad of used £50 notes, foil Guy Clinch observes, ' Pecunia non olet was dead wrong. At the time, Jack is beset with doubts about the source of his inheritance. In the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel All The King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren (1946), protagonist Jack Burden muses that perhaps Vespasian had been right. They regarded it as a slap in the face for the dilettanti and Die-hards, who replied by christening their new Warden Non-Olet.' The subject had, if anything, rather recommended him to the Progressive Element. Lewis, the Warden of Bracton College is given the nickname 'Non-Olet' for having written 'a monumental report on National Sanitation. Scott Fitzgerald alludes to Vespasian's jest in The Great Gatsby with the phrase 'non-olfactory money'. The proverb receives some attention in Roland Barthes's detailed analysis of the Balzac story in his critical study S/Z. 'Vespasian's axiom' is also referred to in passing in the Balzac short story Sarrasine in connection with the mysterious origins of the wealth of a Parisian family.

Vespasian's name still attaches to public urinals in Italy ( vespasiano) and France ( vespasienne). The phrase pecunia non olet is still used today to say that the value of money is not tainted by its origins. When Titus said 'No', Vespasian replied, 'Yet it comes from urine' ( Atqui ex lotio est). The Roman historian Suetonius reports that when Vespasian's son Titus complained about the disgusting nature of the tax, his father held up a gold coin and asked whether he felt offended by its smell ( sciscitans num odore offenderetur). It was used in tanning, wool production, and also by launderers as a source of ammonia to clean and whiten woollen togas. The urine collected from these public urinals was sold as an ingredient for several chemical processes. Vespasian imposed a urine tax on the distribution of urine from Rome's public urinals (the Roman lower classes urinated into pots, which were later emptied into cesspools). The tax was removed after a while, but it was re-enacted by Vespasian around 70 AD in order to fill the treasury. A tax on the disposal of urine was first imposed by Emperor Nero under the name of vectigal urinae in the 1st century AD.

Pecunia non olet origin