A RETIRED MONEY LAUNDERER REPORTS ON FINDING AN EFFECTIVE PLATFORM TO IDENTIFY TRADE-BASED MONEY LAUNDERERS

I am pleased to report that I have, after many more inquiries than I thought I might have to make, located a platform that has the data necessary for compliance officers to identify, in real-time, Trade-Based Money Laundering operations, during Transaction Monitoring. It turns out it's not a specific AML/CFT compliance program, but something from the research people at S & P Global. Though it is not a system specifically designed for identifying individuals engaged in AML/CFT, my analysis, purely from the laundryman's viewpoint, has confirmed that it is not only effective to catch TBML players running traditional typologies, but also has the data necessary to ferret out the more advanced and obscure variations that compliance officers generally fail to catch in real-time. I applied some of the advanced techniques & methods, to see if the data available in the system would expose them, and the results were positive.

Take a close look at these three S & P systems that, when employed in conjunction with one another, open the data doors compliance officers need to find TBML:
(1) Global Trade Analysis Suite, which makes available literally all the world's official trade and customs data.
(2) Trade Compliance Secure: which tracks global container paths in real-time.
(3) Vessel Tracking System, which gives complete vessel profiles, shell companies involved, and ports visited, for compliance screening and historical searches, and for risk management purposes.

Full disclosure: I am not affiliated with S & P Global, and I only became aware that their platform might be relevant to solving TBML challenges more or less by accident, after searching in vain in the Compliance software industry for a program, and them broadening my search, after a lack of success with available AML systems.