A five-step guide
\nDirty money needs laundering if it\u2019s to be of any use \u2013 and the UK is the best place in the world to do it.<\/p>\n
Oliver Bullough reports: Kleptocrats, fraudsters and crooks steal hundreds of billions of pounds, dollars and euros from the rest of us every year, but that gives them a problem: how can they stop the rest of us knowing what they\u2019ve done with the proceeds? They have to stop their haul looking suspicious, to cleanse it of any criminal taint, or face losing their hard-stolen cash.<\/p>\n
Money laundering, as this process is known, is notoriously difficult to uncover, investigate and prosecute. Occasionally, however, an insider breaks cover \u2013 someone such as Howard Wilkinson, who blew the whistle on perhaps the largest money-laundering scheme in history, the movement of \u20ac200bn of suspect funds through the Estonian branch of Denmark\u2019s biggest bank between 2007 and 2015, most of it earned in the dodgier corners of the former Soviet Union, some perhaps belonging to Vladimir Putin himself.
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\u201cNo one really knows where this money went,\u201d Wilkinson, a former Danske Bank employee, told Denmark\u2019s parliament last year. Once the money had got into the global financial system, \u201cit was clean, it was free.\u201d<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s most famous money launderer is HSBC, thanks to its systematic cleansing of the earnings of the Latin American drug cartels over the second half of the last decade, for which it was fined $1.9bn by the US government in 2012. But that was a tiny operation compared to the Danske Bank scandal. If gathered together, the suspect funds moved through the bank\u2019s Estonian outpost could buy HSBC, with more than enough left over to buy Danske Bank too.<\/p>\n
The scandal has been big news in Denmark and Estonia, but barely grazed public consciousness in the UK. This is strange, because Britain played a key role. All of the owners of the bank accounts that first aroused Wilkinson\u2019s suspicions had their identity hidden behind corporate structures registered in the UK \u2013 including Lantana Trade LLP, the one that may have been connected to Putin. That means this is not just a Russian, Estonian or Danish scandal, but something far closer to home. In November, Wilkinson told a European parliament committee that the countries hosting these companies are just as culpable. \u201cWorst of all is the United Kingdom,\u201d he said. \u201cThe United Kingdom is an absolute disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n
The British government is supposedly committed to tackling grand corruption and financial crime, yet Britain\u2019s involvement in this mega-scandal has never been mentioned in parliament, or been addressed by ministers. It is far from the first time that British companies have been involved in high-profile money-laundering. Among the characters who have used British shell companies to hide their money are Paul Manafort, disgraced former chairman of Donald Trump\u2019s election campaign, and Viktor Yanukovich, overthrown president of Ukraine, among thousands of lower-profile opportunists…..TheGuardian<\/a><\/p>\n Illustration: Leon Edler\/The Guardian<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A five-step guide Dirty money needs laundering if it\u2019s to be of any use \u2013 and the UK is the best place in the world to do it. Oliver Bullough reports: Kleptocrats, fraudsters and crooks steal hundreds of billions of … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/2072.jpg\")
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