THE NEW YORK TIMES: Government officials in the province of British Columbia were aware that suspicious money was entering their revenue stream, but took no steps to stop it.
VANCOUVER — Self-professed students were buying multimillion-dollar homes in the Vancouver area, with dubious sources of income, or none at all.
A family of modest means transferred at least 114 million Canadian dollars to British Columbia.
Loan sharks cleaned their dirty money by giving garbage bags and hockey bags full of illicit Canadian 20 dollar bills to gamblers who took it onto casino floors.
Those were just some of the findings from a long-awaited report into money laundering in Canada’s western province of British Columbia, which after two years of testimony was finally released by a special commission on Wednesday.
Canada is a “major money laundering country,” with weak law enforcement and gaps in its laws, that put it on a list of countries that included Afghanistan, China and Colombia, according to a 2019 report by the State Department.
Few places in Canada launder as much money as the province of British Columbia, specifically the region around Vancouver, which has one of the country’s biggest underground economies. The province has earned an international reputation as a haven for “snow washing” — a term for money laundering in Canada, according to government officials. » | Catherine Porter, Vjosa Isai and Tracy Sherlock | Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Showing posts with label money laundering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money laundering. Show all posts
Thursday, June 16, 2022
Saturday, March 05, 2022
Michael Lambert: Patel Lets Desperate Ukrainians Know They Are Not Welcome in the UK
Mar 5, 2022 • Whilst the whole world looks on in horror at the terrible events happening in Ukraine, the UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, the daughter of immigrants, does everything possible to make it difficult for desperate refugees to come to the UK. Her first reaction was to make it clear that any refugees wanting to come to the UK would have to subject themselves to our new points-based immigration system involving lengthy bureaucracy including testing for English proficiency and general knowledge about the UK.
Whilst other countries all over Europe were abandoning all controls for these desperate people, Patel went to the Commons and announced that certain people might be permitted to come to the UK, but only if they could prove they had very close relatives in the UK. In the meantime, one of her ministers, Kevin Foster, announced that the refugees could apply to come to the UK to pick fruit!
Under Pate,l the government's immigration is in chaos. Following Brexit, whole families are coming to the UK from the Third World to replace individual former EU nurses, and others. Furthermore, money launderers operate with impunity and many others are able to employ workers for cash-in-hand and make no payments to the Pat-As-You-Earn scheme( PAYE) or make any National Insurance contributions (NIC.)
Applicants for asylum or British nationality are kept waiting for up to ten years or more whilst being told they are not permitted to work.
You can view Michael Lambert's earlier video on Priti Patel here.
Whilst other countries all over Europe were abandoning all controls for these desperate people, Patel went to the Commons and announced that certain people might be permitted to come to the UK, but only if they could prove they had very close relatives in the UK. In the meantime, one of her ministers, Kevin Foster, announced that the refugees could apply to come to the UK to pick fruit!
Under Pate,l the government's immigration is in chaos. Following Brexit, whole families are coming to the UK from the Third World to replace individual former EU nurses, and others. Furthermore, money launderers operate with impunity and many others are able to employ workers for cash-in-hand and make no payments to the Pat-As-You-Earn scheme( PAYE) or make any National Insurance contributions (NIC.)
Applicants for asylum or British nationality are kept waiting for up to ten years or more whilst being told they are not permitted to work.
You can view Michael Lambert's earlier video on Priti Patel here.
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
No 10 Pressured Me to Drop Anti-money Laundering Measures, Says Ex-minister
THE GUARDIAN: UK ‘laughing stock’ for failure to stem dirty money, says Lord Faulks QC, who was told to drop register by Theresa May’s No 10
A former Conservative minister, once at the heart of efforts to clamp down on money laundering in London, has revealed that during Theresa May’s premiership, No 10 “leant on him” when he tabled amendments to introduce a public register of overseas property owners.
Lord Faulks said he had first tried to put the register into the criminal finances bill in 2017 and then again into a government bill on money laundering in 2018. He had described the overseas ownership of dirty money in London as an obscenity.
Faulks, a distinguished barrister and now an independent peer, told the Guardian he was rung by Downing Street during May’s tenure and told to go to a meeting where he met civil servants from four government departments including the Foreign Office, business officials and the Home Office. They told him to drop the amendments – for which he had a voting majority in the Lords – because they assured him Whitehall had the issue in hand.
He told the Guardian: “I was obviously misled because nothing has subsequently happened. I can only think a deluded desire to protect the City of London has led to all these delays.
“It is a real irony that our reputation for protecting the rule of law is one of the things that attracts people who have very little regard for the rule of law themselves and come from countries which ignore it almost altogether. » | Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor | Tuesday, February 15, 2022
A former Conservative minister, once at the heart of efforts to clamp down on money laundering in London, has revealed that during Theresa May’s premiership, No 10 “leant on him” when he tabled amendments to introduce a public register of overseas property owners.
Lord Faulks said he had first tried to put the register into the criminal finances bill in 2017 and then again into a government bill on money laundering in 2018. He had described the overseas ownership of dirty money in London as an obscenity.
Faulks, a distinguished barrister and now an independent peer, told the Guardian he was rung by Downing Street during May’s tenure and told to go to a meeting where he met civil servants from four government departments including the Foreign Office, business officials and the Home Office. They told him to drop the amendments – for which he had a voting majority in the Lords – because they assured him Whitehall had the issue in hand.
He told the Guardian: “I was obviously misled because nothing has subsequently happened. I can only think a deluded desire to protect the City of London has led to all these delays.
“It is a real irony that our reputation for protecting the rule of law is one of the things that attracts people who have very little regard for the rule of law themselves and come from countries which ignore it almost altogether. » | Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor | Tuesday, February 15, 2022
Wednesday, February 09, 2022
US Seizes $3.6 Billion in Cryptocurrency Linked to Bitfinex Currency Exchange Hack | DW News
Feb 9, 2022 • The United States Justice Department said on Tuesday that authorities seized more than $3.6 billion (€3.2 billion) and arrested a New York couple accused of conspiring to launder billions in cryptocurrency.
Federal law enforcement officials said the recovered sum was linked to the hack of the Bitfinex virtual currency exchange in 2016. This was the department's largest seizure to date. The two suspects were arrested in Manhattan on Tuesday morning. They are accused of using sophisticated techniques to launder the stolen money and conceal the transactions. The couple is scheduled to make their initial appearances in federal court later on Tuesday. They face federal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
In the 2016 hack, about $71 million in stolen bitcoin was transferred to an outside digital wallet, officials said. The stolen bitcoin is valued today at more than $4.5 billion (€3.9 billion). Investigators located a wallet containing more than 2,000 bitcoin accounts and followed the trail to accounts at a dark web marketplace called AlphaBay. The marketplace was dismantled by the Justice Department in 2017. Authorities said they obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein, which contained the private keys to the wallet that was used to receive and store bitcoin stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex hack. The keys allowed agents to lawfully seize and recover more than 94,00 bitcoin, the Department of Justice said in a statement. Authorities say they tracked the stolen funds to more than a dozen accounts controlled by Lichtenstein, Morgan and their businesses. Millions of dollars were cashed out through bitcoin ATMs and used to purchase gold, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Walmart gift cards, prosecutors said.
Related.
Federal law enforcement officials said the recovered sum was linked to the hack of the Bitfinex virtual currency exchange in 2016. This was the department's largest seizure to date. The two suspects were arrested in Manhattan on Tuesday morning. They are accused of using sophisticated techniques to launder the stolen money and conceal the transactions. The couple is scheduled to make their initial appearances in federal court later on Tuesday. They face federal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
In the 2016 hack, about $71 million in stolen bitcoin was transferred to an outside digital wallet, officials said. The stolen bitcoin is valued today at more than $4.5 billion (€3.9 billion). Investigators located a wallet containing more than 2,000 bitcoin accounts and followed the trail to accounts at a dark web marketplace called AlphaBay. The marketplace was dismantled by the Justice Department in 2017. Authorities said they obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein, which contained the private keys to the wallet that was used to receive and store bitcoin stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex hack. The keys allowed agents to lawfully seize and recover more than 94,00 bitcoin, the Department of Justice said in a statement. Authorities say they tracked the stolen funds to more than a dozen accounts controlled by Lichtenstein, Morgan and their businesses. Millions of dollars were cashed out through bitcoin ATMs and used to purchase gold, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Walmart gift cards, prosecutors said.
Related.
US Married Couple Arrested for Allegedly Conspiring to Launder $4.5bn in Bitcoin
THE GUARDIAN: Husband and wife, a rapper on TikTok, are accused in the US’s biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft case
The US justice department has announced the unraveling of its biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft case, seizing a record-shattering $3.6bn in bitcoin in a saga that has captivated the internet.
US officials said on Tuesday the recovered sum was linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached by hackers nearly six years ago.
Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Morgan, 31, both New Yorkers, were arrested in Manhattan on Tuesday morning, accused of relying on various sophisticated techniques to launder the stolen cryptocurrency and to conceal the transactions.
They face charges of conspiring to commit money laundering as well as to defraud the United States. The case was filed in a federal court in Washington DC.
“The message to criminals is clear: Cryptocurrency is not a safe haven. We can and we will follow the money, no matter what form it takes,” said the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, on Tuesday. » | Samira Sadeque and agencies | Wednesday, February 9, 2022
The US justice department has announced the unraveling of its biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft case, seizing a record-shattering $3.6bn in bitcoin in a saga that has captivated the internet.
US officials said on Tuesday the recovered sum was linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached by hackers nearly six years ago.
Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Morgan, 31, both New Yorkers, were arrested in Manhattan on Tuesday morning, accused of relying on various sophisticated techniques to launder the stolen cryptocurrency and to conceal the transactions.
They face charges of conspiring to commit money laundering as well as to defraud the United States. The case was filed in a federal court in Washington DC.
“The message to criminals is clear: Cryptocurrency is not a safe haven. We can and we will follow the money, no matter what form it takes,” said the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, on Tuesday. » | Samira Sadeque and agencies | Wednesday, February 9, 2022
Sunday, December 05, 2021
Fraudsters of the World, Come to London. And Bring Your Dirty Money
THE OBSERVER: Kleptocrats love this country, knowing full well they’ll be free from proper scrutiny
There is no better representation of the decline of the English upper class into the global rich’s servant class than Ben Elliot. On the one hand, the co-chairman of the Tory party is now a rent collector, hauling in money for the Johnson administration from the Russian rich and native hedge fund bosses.
On the other, he is an actual servant: an upmarket flunkey, to be sure, praised by society magazines for his “puppyish schoolboy charm”, but a flunkey nonetheless. Elliot is a founder of the Quintessentially “concierge” service that gives the super-rich anything they want: luncheon on an iceberg; the Sydney Harbour bridge closed for a wedding proposal. There’s nothing Elliot won’t do for paying customers up to and including arranging a meeting with our future sovereign. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, is Elliot’s aunt and it appears that no considerations of good form or good manners have prevented him monetising the connection. Not that the prince appears to mind. A Quintessentially advert interrupts a montage of shots of yachts and celebrities to quote his royal highness as saying he is “particularly grateful” to Quintessentially for organising a party he attended. Members of Elliot’s Quintessentially club donate to the Conservatives. The Conservatives gave Elliot £1.4m of taxpayers’ money in 2016 to “attract the right high-value individual investors to the UK through bespoke programmes”. If on arrival, those high-value individuals went on to show how valuable they were by hiring Quintessentially and donating to the Tories, the circle would be complete.
Upstairs has moved downstairs in the remains of the Tory day and a large segment of British capitalism is now employed as the best servants money can buy. The law, PR, City, estate agency and banking know that easy riches come from serving the large part of the world where it pays to forget Balzac’s warning that the secret of a great fortune no one can explain is invariably an undetected crime. For want of an agreed name I propose “Corruptistan” to cover Russia and the ex-Soviet states, the kleptocracies of Africa and the Middle East and probably soon China as the communist elite learns how to expatriate its wealth. » | Nick Cohen | Saturday, December 2021
There is no better representation of the decline of the English upper class into the global rich’s servant class than Ben Elliot. On the one hand, the co-chairman of the Tory party is now a rent collector, hauling in money for the Johnson administration from the Russian rich and native hedge fund bosses.
On the other, he is an actual servant: an upmarket flunkey, to be sure, praised by society magazines for his “puppyish schoolboy charm”, but a flunkey nonetheless. Elliot is a founder of the Quintessentially “concierge” service that gives the super-rich anything they want: luncheon on an iceberg; the Sydney Harbour bridge closed for a wedding proposal. There’s nothing Elliot won’t do for paying customers up to and including arranging a meeting with our future sovereign. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, is Elliot’s aunt and it appears that no considerations of good form or good manners have prevented him monetising the connection. Not that the prince appears to mind. A Quintessentially advert interrupts a montage of shots of yachts and celebrities to quote his royal highness as saying he is “particularly grateful” to Quintessentially for organising a party he attended. Members of Elliot’s Quintessentially club donate to the Conservatives. The Conservatives gave Elliot £1.4m of taxpayers’ money in 2016 to “attract the right high-value individual investors to the UK through bespoke programmes”. If on arrival, those high-value individuals went on to show how valuable they were by hiring Quintessentially and donating to the Tories, the circle would be complete.
Upstairs has moved downstairs in the remains of the Tory day and a large segment of British capitalism is now employed as the best servants money can buy. The law, PR, City, estate agency and banking know that easy riches come from serving the large part of the world where it pays to forget Balzac’s warning that the secret of a great fortune no one can explain is invariably an undetected crime. For want of an agreed name I propose “Corruptistan” to cover Russia and the ex-Soviet states, the kleptocracies of Africa and the Middle East and probably soon China as the communist elite learns how to expatriate its wealth. » | Nick Cohen | Saturday, December 2021
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
The City of London Is Hiding the World’s Stolen Money
THE NEW YORK TIMES: In 1969, two years after the Cayman Islands, a British territory, passed its first law to allow secretive offshore trusts, an official government report struck an ominous note. A tide of glossy propositions from private developers, it warned, was washing through the islands. Cayman was fast becoming a state captured by shady finance.
Those were the pungent beginnings of a modern system brought to light by the Pandora Papers, an enormous data leak coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The papers exposed a smorgasbord of secretive and questionable financial dealings by more than 330 politicians and public officials from over 90 countries and territories — and over 130 billionaires from Russia, the United States and elsewhere. On display was a dizzying array of chicanery and wealth hoarding, often by the very people who should crack down on it.
The revelations, published on Oct. 3, are global in scope. But if there is one country at the system’s heart, it is Britain. Taken together with its partly controlled territories overseas, Britain is instrumental in the worldwide concealment of cash and assets. It is, as a member of the ruling Conservative Party said last week, “the money laundering capital of the world.” And the City of London, its gilded financial center, is at the system’s core. For Britain, whose bloated financial sector exacerbates widespread economic problems, that’s bad enough. For the world, at the mercy of an economic system rigged for the rich, it’s even worse. » | Nicholas Shaxson | Monday, October 11, 2021
Monday, June 24, 2019
Jared Kushner Now a Target in DOJ Money Laundering Investigation
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Is Dubai a Money-laundering Hub? | Inside Story
It is one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates… an absolute monarchy long ruled by the Al Maktoum family.
The rapid development of the city has made it one of the fastest growing economies in the world. But the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies has obtained leaked property data from the city state. And it is found that those who make money out of wars, who finance terror, or are involved in drug-trafficking use Dubai’s real-estate market as a haven for money-laundering.
Presenter: Peter Dobbie | Guests: Casey Kelso, Advocacy Director at Transparency International; Andreas Krieg, Assistant Professor at the Defense Studies Department at King's College London; Laurent Lambert, SeniorPolicy Analyst at The Social and Economic Survey Research Institute at Qatar University
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
THE GUARDIAN: Executive quits in front of US Senate as bank faces massive fines for 'horrific' lapses that resulted in laundering money for drugs cartels and pariah states
Executives with Europe's biggest bank, HSBC, were subjected to a humiliating onslaught from US senators on Tuesday over revelations that staff at its global subsidiaries laundered billions of dollars for drug cartels, terrorists and pariah states.
Lawmakers hammered the British-based bank over the scandal, demanding to know how and why its affiliates had exposed it to the proceeds of drug trafficking and terrorist financing in a "pervasively polluted" culture that persisted for years.
A report compiled for the committee detailed how HSBC's subsidiaries transported billions of dollars of cash in armoured vehicles, cleared suspicious travellers' cheques worth billions, and allowed Mexican drug lords buy to [to buy] planes with money laundered through Cayman Islands accounts.
Other subsidiaries moved money from Iran, Syria and other countries on US sanctions lists, and helped a Saudi bank linked to al-Qaida to shift money to the US. » | Dominic Rushe in New York | Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Friday, November 13, 2009
THE GUARDIAN: Federal investigators moved to seize four mosques in the US and a skyscraper in Manhattan yesterday over their alleged financial aid to Iran, in an extraordinary step likely to worsen relations between Washington and Tehran.
Prosecutors in Manhattan filed a civil complaint in the federal court seeking the forfeiture of more than $500m in assets of the Alavi Foundation, which describes itself as a charitable foundation, and a company, Assa.
The mosques are in New York City, Maryland, California and Texas.
Prosecutors claim that the foundation and the company have been engaged in money laundering, with the cash sent back to Tehran.
The move could be designed to punish the Tehran government at time when its relations with the US are already strained over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme.
But the Obama administration also risks incurring the anger of American Muslims if the mosques, all Shia, are seized. The takeover of mosques would also raise constitutional questions around the right of freedom to religion.
The move comes at a sensitive time, with a debate under way in the US over the loyalty of American Muslims after the shooting at Fort Hood last week. Major Nadil Malik Hasan was yesterday charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder. >>> Ewen Macaskill in Washington | Friday, November 13, 2009
Thursday, October 02, 2008
THE GUARDIAN: Serious Fraud Office investigating allegations of bribery and money laundering
British investigations into BAE, Britain's biggest arms company, appear to have revived today after it was disclosed that a key BAE agent has been raided.
Investigators from the Serious Fraud Office arranged for the agent, Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, to be raided in Austria.
Austrian prosecutors said the raids were carried out at the request of the SFO investigating allegations of bribery and money laundering.
The Austrian police seized a quantity of documents from the home and office of Mensdorff-Pouilly, who has been accused of receiving millions of pounds from BAE for promoting deals. He is the Viennese laird of a Scottish castle.
The SFO's investigations into BAE have been controversial as the government stopped its inquiry into Saudi arms deals. Critics have alleged that the government is soft on BAE and has placed the company above the law and effectively made it immune from prosecution - an accusation denied by ministers. Fraud Investigators Raid BAE Agent's Austria Home >>> Rob Evans | September 30, 2008
REUTERS:
RPT-Austria Raids Lobbyists in Jetfighter Bribery Probe >>> | September 30, 2008
WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Police Look for Bribery Evidence in Case Against BAE >>> By David Crawford and Daniel Michaels | October 1, 2008
THE TELEGRAPH:
Austrian Addresses Visited in BAE Serious Fraud Office Probe: Police in Austria have visited a number of addresses as part of a UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation into claims that defence company BAE Systems was involved in bribery to secure aircraft contracts in the Czech Republic and Hungary.
The police visited the Austrian home and office of Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, a lobbyist who owns a castle in Perthshire.
The SFO is thought to have asked the Austrian authorities for help with its continuing probe into the defence company. The lobbyist's lawyer, Harald Schuster, said any allegations of wrongdoing were groundless.
Despite abandoning its investigation into BAE's dealing with Saudi Arabia, the SFO has continued to look at the company's defence contracts in other countries, including South Africa and Tanzania. >>> By Russell Hotten | October 1, 2008
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
Sunday, May 13, 2007
TIMESONLINE: THE Swiss authorities have begun a criminal investigation into allegations of bribery and corruption surrounding Britain’s biggest defence firm.
The federal prosecutor’s office said a probe is under way into suspicions of money laundering involving BAE Systems. A spokeswoman for the office, said the inquiry was the result of a report received from the Swiss money-laundering authority.
The move will prove highly embarrassing to the British government, which decided to halt a two-year criminal inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into the £40 billion Al Yamamah contract to sell fighter jets and Hawk trainers to Saudi Arabia.
The spokeswoman declined to give further details. Now Switzerland launches bribery probe into BAE (more) By David Leppard
NZZ: Schweiz ermittelt in Affäre um britischen Rüstungskonzern: Verdacht auf Geldwäscherei
Mark Alexander
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