Abstract: The majority of views hold that the sentencing for money laundering crimes should not exceed that for predicate crimes to avoid the phenomenon of “sentencing inversion”. However, a predicate crime serves only as a factual premise for money laundering, which is not an unpunishable postevent behavior. Sentencing discretion should focus on retributive punishment and preventive punishment while ensuring both the internal and external balance. In comparison, on the one hand, due to the independence of the type and degree of legal interest infringement, the retributive component of punishment for money laundering may not necessarily be lower than that for predicate crimes. On the other hand, the necessity for special prevention is an individualized judgment of the offender, and the antimoney laundering criminal policy from the perspective of general prevention may not be less stringent than that applied to predicate crimes. Therefore, the phenomenon of “sentencing inversion” can be reasonable under certain conditions. In judicial practices, assessing whether the sentencing of money laundering crimes and predicate crimes is balanced should not be limited to comparisons within the same criminal chain. Instead, it is also necessary to examine the appropriateness of sentencing for similar crimes across different criminal chains.

Key words: money laundering; sentencing inversion; retributive punishment; preventive punishment; sentencing balance