Legitimacy-Conversion Crimes: A Crime Script Analysis of Illicit Gold Laundering

Abstract Illicit markets are not isolated from the legitimate economy; rather, they often depend on it. For illegally sourced commodities to become profitable, they need to find their way into legitimate markets. Their illicit origins must be obscured and replaced with a provenance that allows them to be accepted and traded as lawful goods. Focusing on gold laundering, this article develops the concept of legitimacy conversion to explain how material, documentary, and institutional practices enable illicit minerals and metals to enter lawful supply chains. Drawing on desk research and fieldwork, including semi-structured interviews and participant observation in major gold-producing regions, crime script analysis is used to examine how gold laundering works and identify the mechanisms that allow illicit gold to become legally tradable. The anticipated contribution is a framework for explaining how illicit commodities acquire legitimacy as they move into lawful markets, while identifying the actors and institutional processes that enable this transformation. The findings provide a theoretical foundation for examining other illicit commodities, such as wildlife and timber, whose illicit origins can similarly be obscured as they enter legitimate markets.