On August 20, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC“) designated Caesar Emilio Peralta, a national from the Dominican Republic and the criminal organization he is said to control, as significant narcotics traffickers and a drug kingpin under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. Alleged money launderer and trafficker Peralta is known as “Caesar […]
The Bulgarian police have seized a transport truck from Iran attempting to cross the Bulgarian – Turkey border with 288 kilos of pure heroin, with a street value of $15 million at the low end. The heroin was dry-walled, meaning each brick of heroin was covered individually with drywalling material. According to the US 2019 […]
Europol announced today that the Spain and Columbia collectively arrested 23 members of an unidentified transnational criminal organization (the “Group”) involved in laundering the proceeds of crime on behalf of other unidentified transitional criminal organizations. The Group didn’t launder a lot of money – only €2 million.  The Group allegedly used Bitcoin to launder funds […]
Authorities in New York indicted a man alleged to be part of the Sinaloa Mexican cartel in connection with trafficking fentanyl in quantities that would kill 10 million people. Francisco Quiroz-Zamora, aka the “fat one” was charged under the Kingpin Act, which is significant because it carries a term of imprisonment of life on conviction. The […]
The Vatican’s justice branch has released its statement emanating from its recent anti-Mafia meeting with global law enforcement agencies to take-down the Mafia around the world through excommunication, if necessary. The Pope believes that he can make a difference in eradicating the Mafia and transactional criminal organizations through the reach of the Catholic Church. The Catholic […]
The G7 released a special statement on financial crime, promising to re-double its efforts from the last 12 months on ending financial crime, in particular terrorist financing and international money laundering involving transnational criminal organizations. Every year there is a commitment to these goals but this time, the G7 has promised to turn their statements “into […]
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its annual Worldwide Threat Assessment on May 11, 2017, from the US Intelligence Community and compared to last year, there are many more international threats to world security. The Threat Assessment from the US is a summary of all of the threats facing the US, and […]
Vancouver company listed as a criminal organization Allegations of global money laundering from Vancouver through the financial system Today, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC“), designated Vancouver based PacNet and its connected companies, as a significant transnational criminal organization (“TCO“) for its role acting as an alleged money laundering […]
A $200 million a year business and growing The EU – Turkey deal to close the borders of the EU to refugees and migrants has shifted the human smuggling routes back to Libya. The focus back to Libya means ISIS’ large source of terrorist financing from this activity is flowing again, which may also facilitate […]
Summary of the Updates The US House Committee on Homeland Security released a number of updates and received testimony on the status of terrorist financing, terrorism and money laundering in the last few weeks with some interesting developments relevant to banks in terms of changes in terrorist financing typologies that should be added to anti-money […]