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 Intelligence–Security Forum
Bucharest, Romania
July 6–8, 2022
FORUM REPORT

For eight years, Chinese property developer Chen Runkai used hundreds of wire transfers to move tens of millions of dollars into accounts at Canadian banks –– a technique experts say is a hallmark of money laundering…..occrp.org

Credit: James O’Brien/OCCRP

What is Suisse Secrets? Everything You Need to Know About the Swiss Banking Leak.

• What is Suisse Secrets?
• Where did the data come from? What’s known about it?
• What’s in the leaked data?
• Why are clients from some countries not represented in the data?
• How was the veracity of the data checked? What do we know and not know?
• How did journalists select whose information to publish? What about privacy concerns?
• What is a bank’s responsibility regarding its clients?
• What do experts say needs to change?
• What is Credit Suisse’s point of view? How has the bank responded?
• What is OCCRP’s response to Credit Suisse’s criticisms?

Pirate Bankster
Some Experts tried to make sure that the bank then received really tough
penalties. But with limited success, even under the Democrats. In
2014-15, after Credit Suisse pled guilty to enabling $20b of tax dodging
by wealthy Americans, James S. Henry joined with Ralph Nader, Andreas Frank
(Germany), Dr Paul Morjanoff Australia), Bart Naylor(DC), and two
Holocaust survivors in an effort to get the US Department of Labor to
ban CS from advising US pension funds. This was under a law that bans
convicted felons from giving such advice unless they get a DOL waiver.

In January 2015 they presented a full day of testimony, offering evidence
of CS chicanery on 4 continents. However, with the help of lobbyists
and lawyers — including Knight Spaulding’s Chris Wray, who had
represented the bank in the tax dodging case, DOL gave CS a 5-year
“waiver.”

Meanwhile, most of its $2.6b fine from Obama’s DOJ was tax deductible
in Switzerland. No one went to jail. CS lost none of its banking
licenses either in the US or anywhere else. Of course CS had also
pocketed at least $25b of gov bailouts in 2008-2011 during the GFC. Nor,
as we learned from the survivors, did it ever fully honor its 1990
commitments to them. So the actual net penalties were pretty slight —
especially on a NPV basis

Sadly for CS shareholders, however, since 2015, the bank has not
performed very well among international banks — partly because it has
acquired such a dodgy reputation

But CS has managed to slither on.

Indeed, it has diversified in some rather disturbing ways that this
OCCRP investigation doesn’t mention — for example, by acquiring 25%
of the high frequency trading platforms now used on Wall Street to
handle 75% or more of trades. 2021 was a record year for high freq
trading, most of which is anonymous – rt up CS’s alley.

Furthermore, in mid 2017, after Trump fired Comey as FBI Director, who
do you suppose he and the US Congress select to replace him — with
overwhelming bipartisan support?

None other than CS’s chief xUS defense attorney, Chris Wray. Not
surprisingly, white collar crime cases by the US DOJ + IRS against major
banks have completely dried up since 2017.

And in 2019 — despite “Suissegate,” “Pandora Papers,” and
“Panama Papers,” plus superb additional work by Dr Morjanoff in
Australia, Andreas Frank in Germany, Khadija Sharife in RSA, + our own
research — CS got yet another 5-yr DOL waiver, this time without even
a hearing.

So now we have the long-run context for the important additional
evidence on display in this latest OCCRP story.

How can we make sure that THIS TIME AROUND it will make a difference?

See more: Suisse Secrets-das-ist-das-leak

Harm Bengen / Business Dresses for Banker
www.w-t-w.org/en/harm-bengen
www.harmbengen.de

See also:
Women Against Corruption / WAC
Organized Crime, Money Laundering and Corruption!
What Does It Mean To Women?

Human Trafficking and Financial Corruption
with Anne Basham

Rodrigo de Matos
www.w-t-w.org/en/rodrigo-de-matos/

The report highlights the opportunity to reduce environmental crimes by widening the scope and interpretation of existing Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules.

Pointing to the limits of such an approach, however, the report highlights the need to go further, and proposes a way forward paralleling anti-slavery and conflict diamond approaches.

A new report published today from Finance for Biodiversity (F4B) points to how to break the environmentally-destructive connection between environmental crimes and legitimate investments. F4B calls on the global financial community, working with regulators and civil society organisations, to take steps to ensure the entire financing value chain is free of environmental crimes.

Environment crime, such as illegal wildlife trade and logging, is now one of the most profitable global criminal enterprises, generating up to almost USD300 billion in criminal gains each year, and creating even more profound damage and cost to the environment and society. Many entirely legal enterprises benefit from such environmental crimes, as do those who finance them.
F4B Breaking Env Crimes Finance Connection_final report 

F4B Breaking Env Crimes Finance Connection_final exec summary-1

AUSTRAC
is responsible for preventing, detecting and responding to criminal abuse of the financial system to protect the community from serious and organised crime.

Four new ML/TF risk assessments for Australia’s banking sector

Learn about the criminal threats and vulnerabilities facing major banks, other domestic banks, foreign subsidiary banks and foreign bank branches operating in Australia.
https://www.austrac.gov.au/

Risk assessments

Risk assessments examine current money laundering and terrorism financing threats and vulnerabilities in specific parts of Australia’s financial sector.

They are a resource for reporting entities to use to refine internal controls and to meet your reporting obligations, particularly in relation to suspicious matter reporting.

Risk assessments bring together insights from industry with intelligence from AUSTRAC and our partner agencies to provide a comprehensive assessment of ML/TF risks relevant to a specific sector or product.

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

Offshore havens and hidden riches of world leaders and billionaires exposed in unprecedented leak