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Since the 1990s, international initiatives have lead to a world-wide criminalisation of money laundering and the corruption of foreign officials. Globalisation and the end of the Cold War can explain parts of this new activism against transnational crime. But a focus on such structural processes and the “international community’s” response to them tends to overlook the national interests and power struggles that lie behind the establishment of global prohibition regimes. Moreover, assessments of global legal harmonisation need to be contrasted with the difficulties and divergences of national implementation. Taking France and Germany as examples, this article explores the roles of states as both makers and takers of international law against money laundering and the corruption of foreign officials.