Criminal elements in today's technology-driven society are using every means available at their disposal to launder the proceeds from their illegal activities. While many anti-money laundering solutions have been in place for some time within the financial community, they cannot adapt to the ever-changing risk and methods in relation to money laundering. In order for a more adaptive, intelligent and flexible solution for anti-money laundering, the intelligent agent technology is applied in this research. Intelligent agents with their properties of autonomy, reactivity and proactivity are well suited for money laundering prevention controls. Several types of agents are proposed and a novel and open multi-agent architecture is presented for anti-money laundering. A prototype system for money laundering detection is also developed to demonstrate the advances of the proposed system architecture and business value.