2024 OECD Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum

26 – 27 March 2024

Democracies are under unprecedented internal and external pressures, and efforts to uphold integrity are more important than ever. Threats of foreign interference, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the speed and scale of climate change are giving rise to new corruption risks and increasing pressure on integrity frameworks. Strengthening these frameworks is essential to support government, the private sector and civil society in efficiently combating corruption and producing the best outcomes for the public.

The 2024 OECD Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum will gather leaders from around the world to share new thinking, insights and evidence, and to explore how anti-corruption policies and integrity frameworks can enhance our ability to respond to the future challenges our democracies face. It will also mark the 25th Anniversary of the Anti-Bribery Convention, a cornerstone in the global fight against corruption, and a catalyst for policy change.



Julias Baer Bank Financial Crimes

On this episode of the Whistleblowers, John Kiriakou speaks with Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer. While working in the Cayman Islands as an employee of Julius Baer he exposed financial crimes. In blowing the whistle, Elmer believes he was acting in the public interest. Since then he has been pursued for breaking draconian Swiss banking secrecy laws. His family has been severely harassed. Under investigation since 2005, he has already served 220 days in prison, and is still being pursued by judges of the high court in Zurich.


Julias Baer Bank financial crimes.

Vom Compliance Officer zum Whistleblower

Isabell Hemming
www.w-t-w.org/en/isabell-hemming

New Europol Report Shines Light On Multi-Billion Euro Underground Criminal Economy

Europol’s inaugural threat assessment on financial and economic crimes leverages operational insights and strategic intelligence contributed by EU Member States and Europol’s partners.
The Other Side of the Coin – Analysis of Financial and Economic Crime

The world is getting smaller, as trade, communication and infrastructure on a global scale brings us closer together. However, there is another, darker, side to the coin: our interconnected world is being abused by criminals who have created an underground economy to sustain their illegal operations.

Europol’s first ever threat assessment on the topic, ‘The other side of the coin: an analysis of financial and economic crime in the EU’, sheds a light on this system which, from the shadows, sustains the finances of criminals worldwide.

The report is based on a combination of operational insights and strategic intelligence contributed to Europol by EU Member States and Europol’s partners. It analyses all financial and economic crimes affecting the EU, such as money laundering, corruption, fraud, intellectual property crime, and commodity and currency counterfeiting.

Europol’s Executive Director Catherine De Bolle said:

Organised crime has built a parallel global criminal economy around money laundering, illicit financial transfers and corruption. With modern technology, they have diversified their modi operandi to evade detection. The report presents Europol’s expertise in financial and economic crimes, detailing how the current threats are manifesting themselves and how these crimes impact the wider society. It serves as a roadmap to foster cooperation that will derail the world of criminal finances, intercept illicit profits, and – above all else – Make Europe Safer.

The European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said:

Financial and economic crime, and its scale, is a corrosive force in society. Europol and the European Financial and Economic Crime Centre are part of the solution. This report sets out the increasingly sophisticated methods of organised crime and the European law enforcement successes in fighting back. If EU Member States work together even closer on this fight, we can achieve great results.

Key findings of the reportAlmost 70% of criminal networks operating in the EU make use of one form of money laundering or the other to fund their activities and conceal their assets.
More than 60% of the criminal networks operating in the EU use corruptive methods to achieve their illicit objectives.
80% of the criminal networks active in the EU misuse legal business structures for criminal activities.
The criminal landscape in this area is fragmented, with key players often located outside of the EU.
The techniques and tools used by the criminals advance quickly, as they take advantage of technological and geopolitical developments.

Asset recovery as a powerful deterrent

Asset recovery remains one of the most powerful tools to fight back. It deprives criminals of their ill-gotten assets and prevents them from reinvesting them in further crime or integrating them into the mainstream economy.

Increasing efforts are being made by EU legislators, Member States and law enforcement to corrode the economic power of serious and organised crime through the recovery of confiscated assets. Yet the amount of captured proceeds still remains too low – below 2% of the yearly estimated proceeds of organised crime, according to a data collection carried out on seized assets for the purpose of the report.

Commissioner Johansson’s speech at a press point with Ms Catherine De
Bolle, Executive Director of Europol on the first flagship report of the
Economic and Financial Crime Centre:
Commissioner Johansson Speech

Corruption and moneylaundering are destroying the planet. Environmental crimes like illegal wildlife trade, forestry crimes, illegal fishing, illegal mining, and waste trafficking are destroying our natural resources and threatening sustainable livelihoods.
Thank you Anne wonderful cartoon !!

Anne Derenne
https://www.w-t-w.org/en/anne-derenne/

Integrated Security for Germany – Anti Mony Laundering

Unfortunately, it is not enough to keep claiming that money laundering should be combated – it has to be done.

Money laundering has not been combated for decades. Money laundering finances organised crime and terrorism. It causes considerable economic damage and endangers fair economic competition.
Money laundering endangers democracy and the rule of law

  • Integrated Security for Germany – Anti Mony Laundering

“Providing security for its citizens is the most important job of every state, of every society.
Without security there can be no freedom, nostability, no prosperity.”

We will improve the transparency of asset relationships in order to combat money laundering more effectively, to better implement sanctions regimes and to be able to identify land acquisitions for security-endangering purposes in good time. This will also contribute to a better security policy understanding of financial and economic influence. In addition, efforts are being made to optimise anti-money laundering structures and their resources (page 55).

The Federal Government continues to work at national, international and EU level to sharpen existing measures to combat financial crime and money laundering and, if necessary, to create supplementary ones in order to identify financial flows in the area of organised crime even better and to further close gaps in the traceability of criminally obtained funds and assets. We do this in particular within the framework of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). In this way, we are helping to ensure that criminals cannot use their illegally acquired assets and that they are deprived of them (pages 56-57).

At the national level, the Federal Government will strengthen the strategic approach against financial crime and money laundering in terms of organisation and personnel. In order to effectively combat money laundering, responsibilities will also be reviewed and the recommendations from the FATF German audit will be swiftly implemented into German law where necessary (page 57).
National Security Strategy – EU-14.6.2023.1

 

 

 

 

 

 

The War on Money Laundering has Failed

Corruption And Money Laundering Are Destroying The Planet

This year’s report explains that a small improvement in risks relating to the quality of countries’ anti-money laundering frameworks is offset by increased risks in four other areas measured by the Basel AML Index: corruption and bribery, political transparency, financial transparency, and political/legal risks.

But while money laundering continues to be a major problem from year to year, the factors that contribute to money laundering risk are evolving. One such evolution is the growing realization that money laundering weaknesses are enabling criminals to profit from harming our fragile environment. This is why this year’s Index includes a new environmental crime indicator in its set of (now) 18 indicators.

What does environmental crime exactly have to do with money laundering risk? And what does the initial data show?

Corruption and money laundering are destroying the planet.  Environmental crimes like illegal wildlife trade, forestry crimes, illegal mining, and waste trafficking are destroying our natural resources and threatening sustainable livelihoods. Together they are said to make up the world’s fourth largest criminal industry after drug trafficking, human trafficking and counterfeiting. Estimates indicate that environmental crime produces massive illicit proceeds, estimated at $110 billion to $281 billion each year. It is growing at an annual 5–7 percent, more than the pace of global economic growth. While such estimates make numerous assumptions and are thus to be taken with a grain of salt, they nonetheless indicate the scale of the problem.

The global community is only just starting to realise the many roles that corruption plays in facilitating environmental crimes, with some outstanding efforts that lead the charge. Research is also highlighting the myriad ways in which criminals launder the massive illicit proceeds, thereby fuelling our present environmental catastrophe.

The decision to include the environmental crime data was made at the annual review meeting of the Basel AML Index, which draws experts from across sectors and geographies. The review helps to ensure that the methodology continues to be relevant and to reflect current evolutions in the anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) landscape.

The inclusion aligns with the strong recommendation of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that environmental crimes should be considered predicate offences for money laundering. This recommendation in turn echoes statements by other bodies, from the UN General Assembly to the European Union, Eurojust and INTERPOL and the UN Environment Program, that it is essential to tackle the financial drivers of environmental crimes – the corrupt deals and the money laundering that facilitate criminal activity and make it profitable.

Until now, reliable data on countries’ risks of environmental crime were lacking. The Global Organized Crime Index has changed this. First published in 2021 by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GITOC), the expert-led assessment looks at both levels of criminality and resilience to organised crime in the 193 countries covered.

The Basel AML Index uses data from GITOC’s index on crimes involving flora, fauna, and non-renewable resources such as minerals. The new indicator is assigned a 5 percent weight, matching existing indicators on human trafficking and narcotics trafficking. We are thereby attempting to elevate the importance of this frequently overlooked crime.

Initial insights. Based on the data, the average global score for environmental crime is 3.62 out of 10, where 10 is the maximum risk. This sounds fairly low, but there is great variation between jurisdictions – from the highest risk score of 8.33 (Democratic Republic of the Congo) to the lowest of 0.19 (San Marino and Iceland).

Sub-Saharan Africa has the dubious honour of being the region with the highest risks of both environmental crime and money laundering. Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Tanzania and perform particularly poorly. Next up is the region of East Asia and the Pacific, where environmental crime scores are high for Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

Interestingly, there is almost 100 percent correlation between a low risk of money laundering and a low risk of environmental crime. Andorra, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, San Marino, Slovenia, and Sweden, for example, all perform among the best countries in both.

A similar trend, but with a less strong relation, is observed in high-risk countries. For instance, a high risk in the overall money laundering score correlates with high risks of environmental crime for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Madagascar, Myanmar, Mozambique, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.

What do we need? First, more and better data. While reliable enough to be included in the Basel AML Index, the Global Organized Crime Index is based on expert-led desk research from open sources. While GITOC has gone to some length to reduce these biases, having more than one source of data to rely on would allow for greater research depth.

The FATF and its regional bodies have started to assess jurisdictions’ risks associated with environmental crime as part of their rolling program of mutual evaluations. However, this assessment is conducted only as a part of the existing FATF Recommendation 1 and Immediate Outcome 1 on understanding ML/TF risks and applying a risk-based approach to address them.

More focus on this issue is needed to provide the kind of disaggregated and detailed data we really need on different types of environmental crime and their links to money laundering.

Second, more action. The Basel Institute’s Green Corruption program is seeing fast-growing demand for technical assistance in applying existing tools designed to combat corruption and other financial crimes to tackle environmental crimes.

For example, governments are increasingly realising the value of conducting parallel financial investigations in cases of illegal wildlife trade and forest crimes, as the FATF recommends in the above-linked report. This enables law enforcement officers to identify and disrupt not only the poachers and illegal loggers, but the high-level traffickers and their corrupt facilitators who profit from the crimes. While appreciation for the importance of these parallel investigations is growing, they are still too frequently an afterthought to seizures and arrests.

The countries in which the Green Corruption program is currently active suffer medium to high risks of environmental crimes, according to the Global Organized Crime Index data. Indonesia, our newest country of operation, is evaluated as having a high risk, at 7.41 out of 10. In Latin America, Bolivia and Peru score 6.3 and 6.85 respectively. In Sub-Saharan Africa, Malawi (4.07) and Uganda (6.17) also face significant challenges.

Efforts to address the environmental crimes that are threatening these countries’ sustainable development need to go hand in hand with improving resilience to money laundering….  fcpablogCorruption and Money Laundering | Global Witness
globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/corruption-and-money-laundering/

ILLICIT FINANCE, TRADE AND MONEY LAUNDERING

Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum in Bucharest

Parliamentarians from around the world to the 22st Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum on July 7th – 8th at the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest.

ILLICIT FINANCE, ILLICIT TRADE AND MONEY LAUNDERING
Cross-border funds transfer, transactions on virtual currency, trade-based money laundering are methods used by criminal organisations and terrorist financiers, posing a threat to societies while affecting state security. Illegal movements of money or capital should be carefully traced by authorities and cooperation needs to be enhanced in this direction. In this panel, we will discuss recommendations on preventing criminal financial activity in order to protect our economic infrastructure against predatory investment.
PISF-Bucharest-Programme

Andreas Frank AML/CFT Expert
Speech for the 22st Parliamentary Intelligence

Andreas Frank, AML/CFT advisor for the Bundestag, Council Europe and the European Parliament

22ND Parliamentary IntelligenceSecurity Forum
Bucharest, Romania

July
68, 2022
FORUM REPORT

European Money Mule Action Leads To 1 803 Arrests

Ivestigation reveals money mules were laundering profits from online fraud schemes such Europol Announces DD4BC Busts - BankInfoSecurityas business email compromise and Forex scams.

Today saw the conclusion of the anti-money mule operation EMMA 7, an international action coordinated by Europol in cooperation with 26 countries, Eurojust, INTERPOL, the European Banking Federation (EBF) and the FinTech FinCrime Exchange. The operation resulted in 1 803 arrests and the identification of over 18 000 money mules. It also revealed that money mules were being used to launder money for a wide array of online scams such as sim-swapping, man in the middle attacks, e-commerce fraud and phishing.

Over roughly two and a half months of operations, EMMA 7 saw law enforcement, financial institutions and the private sector, including Western Union, Microsoft and Fourthline, cooperate in a concerted effort against money laundering in Europe, Asia, North America, Colombia and Australia. As well as targeting the laundering of profits through money muling networks, investigators also sought intelligence on the sources of these illicit profits, shedding more light on the size and nature of the criminal economies that money mules serve. 

Results from 15 September – 30 November

  • 18 351 money mules identified;
  • 324 recruiters/herders identified;
  • 1 803 arrested individuals;
  • 2 503 investigations initiated;
  • 7 000 fraudulent transactions reported;
  • €67.5 million prevented losses.

Collaborating in the fight on money laundering

Money laundering explainedPhoto Credit: globalintegrity.org

Crime Symposium

Mr David Lewis, Executive Secretary, Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Paris, France

David joined the FATF in 2015, following posts for the UK Government as Head of the Illicit Finance Unit and Senior Policy Advisor at HM Treasury, and before that as a senior member of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (now National Crime Agency). He has a broad range of other experience including at NGO’s and in the public and private sector, from leading and supporting expeditions in the rainforests of Indonesia, to working on some of the largest initial public offerings and government privatisations, and managing the digital product portfolio of the UK national mapping agency. David has a BA (Hons) from the University of Portsmouth, MSc from Cranfield University and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

In his role at the FATF, David is responsible for leading the FATF Secretariat in bringing to bear the combined expertise of governments around the world to fight money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This includes work to monitor how money is being laundered and terrorist organisations are raising and accessing funds; to develop global standards, best practice and guidance to mitigate new and emerging risks; and to assess the action taken by governments. It also includes providing training and support for officials from FATF member countries and the nine FATF-Style Regional Bodies.

Since 2016, the FATF has been represented in G20 meetings of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, where David supports the President and is the G20 Deputy for the task force. High Level Principles and Procedures

“…the work we do has never been more important to protect financial systems, the broader economy and contribute to safety and security. It is vital that members hold each other to account for robust regimes and that our evaluations are subject to scrutiny.“

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Money Laundering. Hanging $100 bills

Laundering Money Online

Gaming the System: Money Laundering Through Online Games
Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies, AML/CTF
Gaming the System: Money Laundering Through Online Games

Swedish police warn gambling under “highest threat”
from money launderin The Swedish police has warned that gambling is at its “highest threat level” of money laundering in the country’s National Risk Assessment of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing report.
Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing report.

In-game artefacts and currencies often have real-life value and can be used to move or invest criminal proceeds. But there are no clear expectations of what game operators can or should do to identify criminal activity.

Online games – especially massive multiplayer online role-playing games – have long been suspected of offering an avenue for moving or otherwise using criminal proceeds, a process known as money laundering. As early as 2013, cybercrime analyst Jean-Loup Richet wrote, based on his investigation of hacker forums, that ‘using the virtual currency systems in [online] games, criminals in one country can send virtual money to associates in another country’.

A review of cybercriminals’ methods. JeanLoup RichetTools and Resources for Anti-Corruption Knowledge –June, 01, 2013 -United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Money laundering is a critical step in the cyber crime process which is experiencing some changes as hackers and their criminal colleagues continually alter and optimize payment mechanisms. Conducting quantitative research on underground laundering activity poses an inherent challenge: Bad guys and their banks don’t share informationon criminalpursuits. However, by analyzing forums, we have identified twogrowth areasin money laundering:

Online gaming—
Online role playing games provide an easy way for criminals to launder money. This frequently involves the opening of numerous different accounts on various online gamesto move money.

Micro laundering—
Cyber criminals are increasingly looking at micro laundering via sites like PayPal or, interestingly, using job advertising sites, to avoid detection. Moreover, asonline and mobile micro-payment are interconnected with traditional payment services, funds can now be moved to or from a variety of payment methods, increasing the difficultyto apprehend money launderers. Micro laundering makes it possible to launder a large amount of money in small amounts through thousands of electronic transactions. One growing scenario: using virtual credit cards as analternative to prepaid mobile cards; they could be funded with a scammed bank account –with instant transaction –and used as a foundation of a Pay Pal account that would be laundered through a microlaundering scheme….
Laundering Money Online: A review of Cybercriminals’ Methods

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Behind the Mask

Whistleblowers, human rights advocates, journalists, activists, artists, lawyers and researchers denouncing abuses and wrongdoing in the course of the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

BEHIND THE MASK presents acts of whistleblowing in times of the coronavirus and exposes practices dangerous to public health during the pandemic. In the context of the Disruption Network Lab programme on the relations between technology, politics, and society, we invite experts that have been speaking out to save other people’s lives by denouncing misconducts and corruption in healthcare systems. Alongside, we focus on forms of retaliation suffered by whistleblowers during the pandemic, and on the stories of those forbidden from speaking out publicly about the coronavirus. The conference and the programme around it also present new forms of collective care, social justice and resistance to foster accountability and literacy, and to defend human rights at a global scale.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted power asymmetries and injustices that already existed in society, but which are now impossible to ignore. Together with people who lost friends, family or jobs, and who suffered violence during the lockdown, are also the ones who never had a job or a home, and who suffer violence almost every day. The work of whistleblowers and those who speak out in times of crisis becomes incredibly important to produce global awareness….WHISTLEBLOWING DURING THE PANDEMIC