Sunday, April 9, 2023

TRADE-BASED MONEY LAUNDERERS CONTINUE TO OUTWIT COMPLIANCE OFFICERS; WILL AI TURN THE TABLES ON THEM?


Trade-based money launderers are among the most innovative and reactive of all laundrymen. After FIU Professor John Zdanowicz, of International Trade Alert, created a program that could identify any international trade transaction that was more than five per cent deviated from current market pricing, the laundrymen switched gears to alternative methods not dependent upon price.

For example, they have worthless materials sent from a bogus manufacturing facility abroad, which justifies the repatriation of narcotics profits to Latin American clients; they employ several unrelated and unconnected banks, processing a single shipment through all of them, quadrupling their funding capability; sending very high-value goods south, but listed on manifest as inexpensive goods, and selling them abroad to transfer wealth.

There are a number of more advanced techniques in current use, but I dare not detail them on this open forum.

We hope and trust that the advent of AI-powered systems, tailored to exposing information about TBML shippers' covert activities will level the playing field. Consider this an open invitation to software developers to create such platforms to assist compliance officers at international banks whose clientele includes major import-export companies.


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