If you have event spent five or six figures on an ultra-luxury handbag at Hermes, you know the value of those items, which have a special place in the hearts of many fashion-conscious women around the world. Also, if you have ever seen throngs of poorly dressed Chinese nationals, outside luxury goods stores in the principal cities of the world, you know those people are buying for resale, most likely as proxies, for they could not afford the prices of their purchases. The Hermes Himalayan Crocodile Birkin, shown above, is for sale this week on the Internet for $295,000. Does that get your attention as a potential instrument of laundrymen?
Luxury goods, which can easily transit international frontiers, and move value across borders without declaring their actual worth, remain useful money laundering tools, for international transit without the risk of bulk cash smuggling. Recently, several Chinese nationals were exposed by the authorities in Singapore for operating a billion dollar international money laundering ring. More than two billion dollars, in cash, financial instruments and personal property, was seized to date.
Of course, super-expensive handbags were also seized. as the direct and proximate result of this, the Government of Singapore has announced that it will hereafter regard such items as evidence of possible use in money laundering activity. Given their expense, it is a sort of backdoor Unexplained Wealth technique. Readers who are addicted to Hermes, and own one or more, may want to leave them at home when engaged in international travel, for Singapore's actions will most certainly catch the attention of law enforcement abroad.
A final note: all of the accused Chinese laundrymen had Dominica Citizenship by Investment (CBI/CIP) passports, of they thought that such criminal activity is no longer being facilitated in the Commonwealth of Dominica. It's as bas there, regarding sales to career criminals, as it ever was.
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