Category: Money Laundering

Today at the Old Bailey the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) secured the conviction of William Osmond, a solicitor, who disclosed confidential details about an investigation and forged a legal document in an attempt to mislead investigators. Osmond, co-founder of a London-based commercial and property law firm Osmond & Osmond Solicitors Ltd, is the first ever solicitor the SFO has prosecuted with “tipping off” a client. Solicitors are legally obliged not to share details of money laundering investigations into their clients. Osmond was also the acting Money Laundering Reporting Officer for the firm, meaning he was expected to report any suspicions…

A leading South-West law firm has been fined £101,357 for failing to act over money laundering red flags on three property transactions, two of which may have involved a sanctioned entity. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) said both the fee-earner and the compliance team at Exeter-based Ashfords missed, did not adequately act on or sufficiently record the red flags, demonstrating “a failure in the firm’s client onboarding and ongoing monitoring processes”. This resulted in the firm receiving “significant sums into its client account in the absence of source of funds evidence”. Ashfords accepted the fine in a regulatory settlement agreement…

The Binance chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, has resigned after pleading guilty to money laundering violations. “I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself”, he said in a post on X. The Justice Department said it was requiring Binance, the largest crypto-exchange in the world, to pay $4.3bn (£3.4bn) in penalties and forfeitures. It said Binance had helped users bypass sanctions across the world. “Binance enabled nearly $900 million in transactions between US and Iranian users, and facilitated millions of dollars in transactions between US users and users in Syria,…

Singapore’s largest bank, DBS, is grappling with financial exposure of approximately S$100 million (US$73.8 million) in connection with a recent money-laundering scandal that has rocked the city-state, according to the bank’s chief executive, Piyush Gupta. He made this revelation during a press briefing on Monday, shedding light on the bank’s involvement in the ongoing investigation. Gupta disclosed that DBS had provided financing for property purchases involving individuals or companies currently under investigation by Singaporean authorities. In August, the local police made headlines when they arrested 10 foreign nationals on charges that include fraud and money laundering, sending shockwaves throughout the…

SANTANDER UK’s fincrime consultants EY have paid back £15M to the bank – and no longer work for the lender, it’s been revealed. A dispute between the banking giant and the Big Four has led to the prospect of redundancies in EY’s fincrime division in the UK. EY had been recruited to work on the bank’s so-called “Project Morgan” but there was a dispute over the quality of assistance, which has now resulted in the multi-million pound refund and termination of contract. The dispute centred on the quality of work performed by EY which Santander claimed was poor, leading the…

Hello and welcome to the 22nd issue of the UKFIU’s magazine SARs in Action. In this special edition wefocus on the issue of money mules, starting with an article examining common indicators of money mule accounts… Article Credit: https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/publications/675-sars-in-action-issue-22/file

SINGAPORE: A couple, among the 10 people charged in a S$2.8 billion (US$2 billion) money laundering probe, turned to court on Wednesday (Oct 18) to seek bail but failed in their attempt. The combined assets between Chinese nationals Lin Baoying, 44, and Zhang Ruijin, 45, come to about S$325 million, with Lin having the larger share of the pie. In the exchange of arguments between the prosecution and defence, with affidavits from the investigating officers involved, more information about their backgrounds were revealed. Lin faces three charges for forging documents to sell a property in Macau and for lying that…

A man dubbed the ‘El Chapo of the Cotswolds’ faces extradition to the US on six drug charges. Matthew Grimm, a 49-year-old father of two who lives near Bristol, is accused of helping to run a $6.5million drugs racket and faces up to 120 years in prison. Officers from the National Crime Agency detained him last November after the US issued a warrant. Grimm is accused of shipping substances to US-based customers from the Netherlands via an online portal called Smokey’s Chem Site. As reported by The Mirror, the alleged operation began in 2012 and was shut down by an…

Secrecy and lax oversight have made the US a hiding place for dirty money accrued by environmental criminals in the Amazon rainforest, a report says. Illegal loggers and miners are parking sums ranging from millions to billions of dollars in US real estate and other assets, says the report, which calls on Congress and the White House to close loopholes in financial regulations that it says are contributing to the destruction of the world’s biggest tropical forest. “We are trying to show that the US is the easiest place to hide dirty money, which is a major problem not just…

Suspected members of a massive money laundering syndicate busted in Singapore last month purchased prestige properties in London in 2021 worth almost $60 million, company and land records reviewed by OCCRP and Radio Free Asia reveal. The investments highlight the global reach of a syndicate that Singapore police say laundered the proceeds of illicit “scams and online gambling.” More than 400 officers swept in on multiple locations in the Southeast Asian city state in mid-August, arresting 10 people. Prosecutors said in a September 5 court hearing that they had seized at least $SG1.8 billion ($1.32 billion) in cash, cryptocurrencies, and…

Sixteen people who were part of a West London-based organised crime group involved in international money laundering and people smuggling have been given jail sentences totalling more than 70 years. A National Crime Agency investigation identified that members of the network were likely to have smuggled around £70 million in cash out of the UK, making hundreds of trips to Dubai, UAE, between 2017 and 2019. OCG custody imagesCharan Singh; Valjeet Singh; Swander Dhal; Amarjeet Alabadis; Diljan Malhotra;Jackdar Kapoor; Jaginder Singh Kapoor; Jasbeer Malhotra; Jasbir Dhal; Jasbir Kapoor;Joe Round; Louise Smith; Manmon Kapur; Mircea Denes; Pinky Kapur; Sundar Vengadassalam NCA…

A discrete Dutch legal structure, favored by family-owned businesses, has become a popular tool for oligarchs and other bad actors to hide their wealth and evade taxes, a new investigation from Follow the Money found. Over the past two decades, financial service providers worldwide have increasingly touted the use of trust office foundations, or STAKs (short for stichting administratiekantoor), which only reveal the names of company directors, concealing actual stakeholders and their assets. Currently, an estimated 21,000 STAKs are registered in the Netherlands, according to FTM. The investigative outlet used ICIJ’s Pandora Papers leak, which contained nearly 12 million documents…

A significant number of UK universities are still taking millions of pounds in cash as payment for tuition fees and accommodation, making them vulnerable to criminal gangs and money laundering, according to a study. A fifth of universities who responded to a freedom of information (FoI) request said they had accepted cash payments, while three institutions each accepted more than £1m in cash in 2019-20 alone. Researchers received responses from 110 universities of which 22 were continuing to accept cash payments, while a further 17 stopped taking cash during or after 2019-20. Cash payments across the 39 institutions totalled £12m…

Over the past fifteen years, notable investigations and exposés, such as the Magnitsky Investigation, Laundromats, Offshoreleaks, Panama Papers, and Pandora Papers, have shed light on the staggering scale of global money laundering with trillions of dollars, predominantly originating from kleptocracies like Russia and other former USSR countries. These illicit funds are cleverly disguised and anonymized through laundering mechanisms, infiltrating the Western financial systems via a vast network of banks, lawyers, real estate agents, and have been utilized to purchase influence, garner political support, and secure positions within local establishments. Recently there have been efforts to combat money laundering such as…

THE CHAIR of the European Banking Authority (EBA) has warned of the money laundering risks of closer financial relatonships with Monaco, San Marino and Andorra. In a letter to the European Commission, the EBA chair warned that the trio of tiny states “historically maintained less rigorous financial regulations” and “may be prone to money laundering and other illicit activities.” The letter says that companies might be tempted to set up in the so-called microstates in a deliberate attempt to benefit from lighter financial standards, which would create “significant risks to consumers” if they sold their wares across the bloc. Monaco…

Singapore police have seized about S$1bn ($735m; £578m) – including luxury homes, cars and watches – in one of its biggest anti-money laundering probes.Gold bars, designer handbags, wine and S$23m in cash were among the items seized in the raids.Police arrested ten people in the operation, all of whom held foreign passports.Raids of this size are rare in Singapore, which has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.The Singapore Police Force said in a statement that simultaneous raids were held across the city-state on Tuesday.It added that 94 properties, including houses in some of the country’s most sought…

The son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro has been arrested for money laundering and illicit enrichment by the country’s attorney general.Nicolas Petro, a politician in Atlantico province, was detained over allegations he was paid by drug traffickers to fund his father’s peace efforts and election campaign.He has denied the claims and welcomed the inquiry when it was launched. The younger Mr Petro’s ex-wife has also been arrested as part of the probe. President Petro, the country’s first left-wing leader, has denied taking money from Colombia’s drug traffickers and ordered prosecutors to investigate his son in March. Writing on social media…

The UK has been the prime location for the Salameh family’s property empire in Europe, with European investigators uncovering £36.5 million of real estate assets acquired between 2012 and 2020, which they believe were purchased with misappropriated funds. European judicial documents reveal, for the first time, how investigators managed to directly trace the source of the funds back to Forry Associates. Forry, the governor’s brother’s company, is suspected of having syphoned off public funds through undisclosed commissions received from Lebanese banks for financial instrument purchases, without providing any corresponding services. Documents seen by The National reveal that all these real…

Six members of a money laundering network which smuggled more than £100m out of the UK to the UAE have been sentenced following an investigation by the National Crime Agency. Sentencing 12 07 23 From left to right: Muhammad Ilyas, Nicola Esson, Beatrice Auty, Jo Emma Larvin and Jonathan Johnson The network transported the cash to Dubai during 83 separate trips between November 2019 and October 2020, overseen by ringleader Abdullah Alfalasi, 48, who was jailed for more than nine years in July last year. The couriers, who were paid around £3,000 for each trip and would be booked on…

More people in their 50s and 60s are being recruited to allow their bank accounts to be used in scams. A growing number of people aged in their 50s and 60s are allowing their bank accounts to be used to move money illegally. Fraud experts say that among the increasing number being recruited as “money mules” – those who allow their bank details to be used to transfer criminals’ cash – are older account holders, as well as business owners who use company bank accounts. Money mules are often not actually involved in crime, but allow their accounts be used…