Tag: money laundering
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As the mayor of Amsterdam, I can see the Netherlands risks becoming a narco-state
Friday, 05 January 2024In the Netherlands, we used to look on the international “war on drugs” with a certain amount of disdain. Its solutions were prohibition, criminalisation, stiff penalties and sentences; our national ...
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ABN raises charges for coffeeshops by 1000% to cover money laundering costs
Thursday, 28 October 2021ABN AMRO is raising its bank charges for coffeeshops by 1000% to cover the costs of complying with anti-money laundering laws. From January coffeeshop owners who have a business account with the bank ...
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Special Report: Burner phones and banking apps
Thursday, 03 December 2020U.S. law enforcement officials say Chinese “money brokers” represent one of the most worrisome new threats in the war on drugs. Small cells of Chinese criminals have upended the way narcotics cash is ...
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Money laundering: How Moroccan cannabis becomes Emirati gold
Tuesday, 22 September 2020Years of investigations have revealed the intricate money laundering network that turns Moroccan hash into gold in Dubai. Revelations into the dealings of Kaloti Jewellery International Group in Duba ...
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Poor IT skills mean investigations into money laundering rarely bear fruit
Monday, 27 July 2020Only a handful of the tens of thousands of annual reports of suspected money laundering end up in court case because watchdog staff lack IT expertise. Some 155,000 cases of possible fraud were brough ...
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Is Southeast Asia's drug trade too big to control?
Tuesday, 19 May 2020Police in Myanmar this week announced the largest synthetic drug seizure on record in Southeast Asia. Between February and April, security forces seized more than 200 million tablets of methamphetami ...
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Cannabis sales in EU raise $13 billion for crime gangs
Tuesday, 26 November 2019Europeans spent at least 11.6 billion euros (£9.9 billion) in 2017 on illegal cannabis purchases, confirming marijuana as the largest drugs market in the 28-country European Union, the European Monit ...
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Criminals launder €13bn a year in the Netherlands, most crime cash is Dutch
Wednesday, 13 November 2019At least €13bn is laundered through the Netherlands on an annual basis, with most of the money coming from Dutch criminal enterprises, according to new research quoted in the Financieele Dagblad. Utr ...
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Taking stock: A decade of drug policy
Monday, 22 October 2018
‘Taking stock: A decade of drug policy’ evaluates the impacts of drug policies implemented across the world over the past decade, using data from the United Nations (UN), complemented with peer-revie ...
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Britain’s war on dirty money lacks oomph
Thursday, 11 October 2018No one knows how much dirty money is rinsed through London, but Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) reckons British banks and their subsidiaries (including those in overseas territories) launder “m ...
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Money launderers are taking EU to the cleaners, experts say
Sunday, 30 September 2018European Union nations may boast the world's most stringent anti-money laundering rules, but recent scandals show that criminals are good at exploiting the bloc's Achilles' heel: A patent lack of coo ...
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ING lax on money laundering, agrees €775m out-of-court settlement
Tuesday, 04 September 2018The public prosecution department has reached a €775m out of court settlement with ING for failing to properly monitor money transfers for potential money laundering. The department says between 2010 ...
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Caricom Commission: Marijuana laws too draconian
Sunday, 08 July 2018The Caricom Regional Commission on Marijuana has labelled existing regional marijuana laws as draconian and one which carries with it inappropriate criminal penalties. Indicating its unanimous positi ...
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Commonwealth Bank agrees to pay $700m to settle money laundering lawsuit
Monday, 04 June 2018The Commonwealth Bank has agreed to pay $700m to settle civil proceedings relating to breaches of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws. The announcement follows court-ordered me ...
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Tax-haven transparency won’t stop money laundering in Britain
Tuesday, 08 May 2018Britain’s overseas territories are to be forced to adopt public registers of company ownership by the end of the decade. That’s a step in the right direction – and one many of us have long been calli ...
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Europe is losing the fight against dirty money
Monday, 02 April 2018Rob Wainwright, who will be leaving his post as Europol director after almost a decade, said: “One of my favorite frustrations is on financial crime — the anti-money laundering regime.“ Professional ...
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Rabobank to pay $369 million in money-laundering case
Thursday, 08 February 2018Dutch lender Rabobank’s California unit agreed to pay $369 million to settle allegations that it lied to regulators investigating allegations of laundering money from Mexican drug sales and organized ...
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Why marijuana retailers can’t use banks
Monday, 22 January 2018Nearly two-thirds of America’s states have legalised pot sales for certain uses, but the federal government still classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, on a par with heroin. Banks that handle ma ...
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A banker who helped hide Mexican drug money is helping U.S. prosecutors
Monday, 18 December 2017A former U.S. manager for Dutch banking giant Rabobank Groep says he helped hide possible criminal activity by clients and is assisting U.S. prosecutors in a long-running investigation of whether the ...
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California proposes armored cars to transport pot tax money
Tuesday, 07 November 2017California should use armored cars to transport hundreds of millions of dollars in cash tax payments expected next year with the state's legal marijuana market, the state treasurer said. The state on ...
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Pot was flying off the shelves in Uruguay. Then U.S. banks weighed in
Friday, 25 August 2017The pharmacies selling pot were doing a brisk business. After Uruguay became the first country in the world to fully legalize marijuana sales for recreational use last month, some of the pharmacies s ...
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Uruguay finds no banks for the bongs
Tuesday, 22 August 2017Understated and simpatico, former Uruguayan president Jose Mujica isn't easily rattled. Just don't mess with his reefer. That was the message from Montevideo last week when a state-owned lender, Banc ...
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Legal marijuana sale faces challenges by banks in Uruguay
Friday, 18 August 2017The legal sale of marijuana in Uruguayan pharmacies is facing challenges as banks refuse to deal with companies linked to the drug in order to follow international financial laws. Uruguayan banks ris ...
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California considering creating a state-run bank for cannabis businesses
Sunday, 16 July 2017California government, financial and marijuana business leaders met last week in a far-from-resolved debate over whether a state-run bank could be the solution to the cannabis industry’s banking prob ...
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Cannabis cash conundrum: Some businesses bury money, others truck it to a federal vault
Wednesday, 12 July 2017With recreational use set to become legal next year under Proposition 64, cannabis sales in the state are expected to top $7.5 billion in 2020, up from about $3.3 billion last year, according to data ...
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Federal bills from Colorado legislators seek to shield state marijuana laws, open banking
Thursday, 18 May 2017Colorado federal lawmakers amplified efforts to protect state-enacted marijuana laws and cannabis businesses supporting banking legislation for the marijuana industry. Reps. Diana DeGette and Mike Co ...
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New federal bill would allow banking for marijuana businesses
Thursday, 27 April 2017Marijuana businesses can’t openly bank and congressman Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., is hoping to change that. Perlmutter on Thursday introduced the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act (SAFE Banking Ac ...
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Panama Papers demonstrate need to reopen UNGASS 2016 outcome document
Friday, 08 April 2016The Panama Papers, a massive leak of confidential documents from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in Panama that helped wealthy clients and money launderers for drug trafficking organisations set up anony ...
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The world's most powerful drug lord has been linked to the Panama Papers
Wednesday, 06 April 2016Documents from global law firm Mossack Fonseca leaked to journalists have linked the firm to two alleged money launderers and drug traffickers tied to notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" G ...
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EU finance ministers call for restrictions on €500 note over crime fears
Thursday, 11 February 2016EU finance ministers have called for an investigation into the €500 note, amid growing concern it is making life easier for terrorists, money launderers and drug barons. The French finance minister, ...
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HSBC sued over drug cartel murders after laundering probe
Monday, 08 February 2016Families of U.S. citizens murdered by drug gangs in Mexico sued HSBC Holdings Plc, claiming the bank can be held responsible for the deaths because it let cartels launder billions of dollars to opera ...
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HSBC fights to stop money-laundering report going public
Wednesday, 13 January 2016HSBC is trying to prevent publication of a report on how it complies with money-laundering rules imposed on it by the US authorities in 2012, when it was fined a record $1.9bn. The bank is arguing in ...
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London is now the global money-laundering centre for the drug trade, says crime expert
Friday, 03 July 2015The City of London is the money-laundering centre of the world's drug trade. UK banks and financial services have ignored so-called "know your customer" rules designed to curb criminals’ abilities to ...
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Big need for marijuana banking, yet Congress has ‘no appetite’ to fix issue
Friday, 03 April 2015Congress doesn’t have the appetite to deal with the conflict between federal and state laws that has caused a banking crisis for the burgeoning marijuana industry in Colorado and other states, accord ...
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HSBC got away with buying cocaine plane
Tuesday, 10 February 2015A money-laundering investigation as big as the bank itself ended with a deferred prosecution agreement that allowed HSBC to escape criminal charges and suffer only a fine. This while the US Departmen ...
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Banks are slowly welcoming legal marijuana dealers
Tuesday, 12 August 2014A top federal official said that 105 banks and credit unions are doing business with legal marijuana sellers, suggesting that federal rules giving financial institutions the go-ahead to provide servi ...
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U.S. issues marijuana guidelines for banks
Friday, 14 February 2014The Obama administration issued guidelines intended to give banks confidence that they will not be punished if they provide services to legitimate marijuana businesses in states that have legalized t ...
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Global Surveillance of Dirty Money
Thursday, 30 January 2014This first independent assessment of the global AML system, conducted by the Center on Law and Globalization, appraises efforts to rate countries by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Financia ...
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Banks say no to marijuana money, legal or not
Tuesday, 14 January 2014Legal marijuana merchants — mainly medical marijuana outlets but also, starting this year, shops that sell recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington — are grappling with a pressing predicamen ...
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Drug law enforcement and financial investigation strategies
Saturday, 31 August 2013
Since the 1980s, there has been a major push in rhetoric and institution-building, emphasizing the centrality of attacking the financial lifeblood of drug trafficking networks and organised economic ...
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Deficiencies in financial oversight enable money laundering
Wednesday, 15 May 2013In July 1989, the leaders of the economic powers assembled at the G7 Paris summit decided to establish a Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to counter money laundering as an effective strategy agains ...
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HSBC gives Argentina prosecutors chance to correct US blunder
Sunday, 31 March 2013The accusations from Argentina's tax authority that London-based HSBC laundered over $100 million may pale in comparison to that of the bank's US - Mexico case, but they raise the specter that someon ...
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Warren: Drug possession warrants jail time but laundering cartel money doesn’t?
Wednesday, 06 March 2013Appearing at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) grilled officials from the Treasury Department over why criminal charges were not filed against officials at HSBC who hel ...
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Gangster bankers: Too big to jail
Wednesday, 13 February 2013The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians, lawyers and in ...
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Outrageous HSBC settlement proves the drug war is a joke
Wednesday, 12 December 2012A settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who's ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to lau ...
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Global banks are the financial services wing of the drug cartels
Sunday, 22 July 2012Last week, managers from Britain's biggest bank, HSBC, lined up before the Senate's permanent sub-committee on investigations. Europe's largest bank ignored warning signs about money-launderers. The ...
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Western banks 'reaping billions from Colombian cocaine trade'
Friday, 01 June 2012While cocaine production ravages countries in Central America, consumers in the US and Europe are helping developed economies grow rich from the profits, a study claims. The vast profits made from dr ...
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Draining Development?
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
The book provides the first collection of analytic contributions, as opposed to advocacy essays and black box estimates, on illicit financial flows (IFFs). Some of the chapter presents new empirical ...
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How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs
Saturday, 02 April 2011"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said a federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than ...
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Banks financing Mexico gangs admitted in Wells Fargo deal
Monday, 28 June 2010Wachovia made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money launde ...
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