government new authority to ban some transactions between US banks and offshore havens, overwhelmingly cleared the House Banking Committee yesterday and appeared headed toward House passage.

The action came as a trial opened in Florida of five people accused of participating in a money-laundering and investment scam that allegedly robbed some 400 investors, including Dionne Warwick, of $60 million.

The case, dubbed "Operation Risky Business,'' which used a Caribbean bank, is said to be the biggest money-laundering case not involving drugs ever pursued by the US Customs Service.

Most money laundering involves illicit profits from drug trafficking, prostitution or other criminal activities, which are moved through a series of bank or brokerage accounts to make them appear to be proceeds of legitimate business activity.

Money laundering is estimated to absorb nearly $600 billion annually, or up to 5 percent of the world's gross domestic product. Public attention focused on money laundering after revelations last summer that the Bank of New York, one of the nation's largest, had served as a conduit for an astonishing $7 billion in Russian money, some of it believed to be from criminal activities.

The Banking Committee voted, 31-1, to approve the bipartisan legislation, the fruit of cooperation between the Clinton administration and key Republican lawmakers.

It combines earlier anti-money-laundering proposals from the administration and Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, the banking panel's chairman.

"This legislation will give the Secretary of the Treasury additional tools to root out international money-laundering havens, which are used to funnel dirty money...into the legitimate international financial network,'' Leach said before the vote.

"Unfortunately, the US banking system is hardly immune from the dirty money that flows all too freely through the global economy.'' The bill would give the Treasury Department the power to ask US financial institutions to collect data on all kinds of transactions with an offshore bank or financial company. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, in a speech in March, identified Russia, Colombia and Nigeria as among the biggest sources of illicit money, and the Caribbean islands of Dominica and Antigua, Nauru in the South Pacific and Liechtenstein in Europe as some of the leading money-laundering centres.