Compliance officers tasked with identifying and interdicting TBML need to understand that one of the principal goals of laundrymen engaged in that illicit activity is to be alert to any developments which might provide openings for not only new techniques, but new routes as well. They are constantly monitoring current events, searching for and seeking out new possibilities for moving criminal proceeds through international trade payments. Compliance officers must also be sensitive to any unfolding news which could create new potential TBML pipelines, or they will always find themselves several moves behind in this global chess game of cat and mouse.
Russian military actions taken to stop Ukraine's export of its agricultural products, through Black Sea shipping, have created unexpected markets in other nations for wheat and corn, principally Argentina and Brazil. Laundrymen have noticed that the grain importing countries in North Africa and the Middle East are now dealing with these South American sources, thereby requiring payments to flow west for these commodities, which means that cocaine traffickers seeking to repatriate the illicit profits they have made in the EU, due to Europe's love affair with the drug, can now hide those funds within payments made to those Latin American exporters.To be blunt, AML enforcement, particularly in the nations of North Africa, is spotty and subject to corruption, giving laundrymen a golden opportunity to move their clients' drug profits, earned in Europe, back to Colombia, Ecuador & Peru, or to tax haven bank accounts in the Western Hemisphere.
We trust that this example will give compliance officers working on TBML a window into how money launderers in that field think, create and operate. They are a force to be reckoned with. If you are not yet a voracious consumer of world news, especially business news, start reading.
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