Tweet According to this article in the New York Times, governments of the European Union have paid at least $125 million to terrorist organizations, mostly Al Qaeda, since 2008 and $66 million of that was paid last year. The US Treasury Department estimates the figure is closer to $165 million and believes that ransom payments […]
Tweet Blanchiment d’argent La police israelienne assist la France dans l’enquete sur des faits de blanchiment d’argent concernant le scandale de la fraude au marche du carbone en France qui aurait coute 1,6B d’euros au Tresor public. Le scam consistait a acheter hors taxes aux Pays-bas des quotas de CO2 credits dans le cadre de […]
Tweet Vatican Strengthens Anti-Money Laundering Pope Francis issued a new anti-money laundering motu proprio effective today to implement the recommendation of Moneyval in respect of the prevention of money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Tweet Mafia Crackdown in Rome Italian police arrested over 120 people today in its largest crackdown on mafia activities around Rome, including several lawyers alleged to have undertaken transactions and incorporated companies on behalf of the ‘Ndrangheta. According to the police, the ‘Ndrangheta ran multiple gambling operations and drug trafficking operations, and laundered the proceeds […]
Tweet Human trafficking – a serious and growing problem According to a report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the revenues of human traffickers is estimated to range from $5 billion to $9 billion annually. And according to a US State Department report published in 2011, approximately 12 million people, primarily women and […]
Tweet Europol report ties mafia to renewable energy This week, Europol released yet another report tying the financing, development and operation of renewable energy projects, particularly wind energy infrastructure projects, to organized crime in Europe. The latest Europol report follows on the heels of an earlier one, the “Serious & Organized Crime Threat Assessment 2013”, […]
Tweet An Interpol-led investigation into the trade of counterfeit goods and products over the last two months has resulted in the arrests of more than 6,000 people in Vietnam, China, Belarus, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Turkey, Namibia, Hong Kong, India, Thailand, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Peru and Ecuador. In total, 24 million fake goods were seized worth […]
Tweet Global Financial Integrity has released an interesting study detailing the illicit flow of funds from Russia to other countries. The highlights of the study entitled “Russia: Illicit Financial Flows and the Role of the Underground Economy”, available here, are that: From 1994 – 2011, Russia lost US$211 billion in illicit cash outflow; Most of […]
Tweet Judge extradited for suspected money laundering Colin Dines, a retired British judge and former criminal law lawyer, is being extradited from London to Rome to face charges by an Italian magistrate that he was part of a transnational criminal organization complicit in laundering £344 million at the behest of the Mafia. In 2010, an […]
Tweet Spanish lawyer Fernando del Valle, whom we wrote about here, was convicted of money laundering and sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay $3.4 million in fines. Authorities believe del Valle laundered up to $250 million through his law firm in Spain’s exclusive Marbella region. The case was one of the […]