Today Financial Crime News is publishing a Financial Crime Country Dashboard for Thailand after the Editor spent a few days last week in Bangkok. Many thanks to all the Thai financial crime fighters in the public and private sector who met with the Editor and in a number of ways influenced this post. Whilst there is no official estimate of the value of proceeds generated annually by predicate crimes committed in Thailand, or foreign proceeds entering Thailand, the amount is likely to be high. The size, nature and location of the Thai economy and its position with a border of 5,656 KM with Ma ..read more

Today, a joint hearing organised by the EU Parliament and the Council was held, with each of the remaining 9 bidding countries, each having 1 hour each to present, with 10 minutes for opening remarks, followed by a Q&A and 3 minutes to conclude. This is the first time a public hearing has been used to determine the seat of an EU Agency, courtesy of a decision by the European Court of Justice. Nine Agencies submitted formal applications. The final decision will be taken on the 22nd February 2024 JF Lopez Aguilar Co Chair of the session and Spanish MEP and Former Spanish Minister of Justic ..read more

Today Financial Crime News is publishing a Financial Crime Country Dashboard for South Africa. This December 2023 Dashboard includes, for example approx 150 data points which have been collected and are represented over 2 pages. It informs as to the nature of the financial crime threats, the main vulnerabilities, how resilient South Africa is to these threats and its overall level of response, with important KRI and KPI data, all from publicly available sources albeit assessed and analysed for accuracy and relevance by FCN.   FCN Country Risk Scores & Ratings: South Africa is rated ..read more

Today Financial Crime News is publishing a Financial Crime Country Dashboard for Mauritius. This December 2023 Dashboard includes, for example approx 150 data points which have been collected and are represented over 2 pages. It informs as to the nature of the financial crime threats, the main vulnerabilities, how resilient Mauritius is to these threats and its overall level of response, with important KRI and KPI data, all from publicly available sources albeit assessed and analysed for accuracy and relevance by FCN. For a copy of the Mauritius Dashboard see HERE: Mauritius Dashboard D ..read more

Financial Crime News, published a book review in 2019 on Bill Browder’s first Book titled “Red Notice” a tribute to the eponymous Sergei Magnitsky of “Magnitsky Act” notoriety who was tortured and murdered in custody by Russian authorities who stole hundreds of millions of dollars that Magnitsky a Russian Tax Lawyer had uncovered. See  HERE. In the sequel, “Freezing Order” Browder chronicles how a global money laundering investigation targeting powerful adversaries, is almost an impossible task, has cost many innocent lives but improbably resulted in millions of dollars of money and ass ..read more

Financial Crime News is today publishing a Country Financial Crime Dashboard for Turkey.  The threats generating significant proceeds of crime and posing a “High” ML threat are illegal drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, human trafficking and fuel smuggling.“Medium” ML threat levels are for aggravated fraud; smuggling of tobacco, tobacco products and alcohol; illegal online betting and corruption.Turkey also faces severe threats from terrorism and has suffered from a significant number of terrorist attacks.  The sectors posing the highest ML/TF risks are related to activities invo ..read more

Today Financial Crime News is publishing an exploration of the early years in fighting financial crime when in the 1980’s and the early 1990’s the follow the money approach ushered in the ant money laundering era and saw the birth of the FATF. EXTRACT: The recent work of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering Terrorism Finance and Proliferation Finance) is well known, but how and why it was established is less well understood and indeed may even be contested. It could have been a task force to tackle offshore tax havens but instead became a task force to tackle drug mon ..read more

It was an honour for the author to speak at the Abu Dhabi Finance Week on a panel focussing on Financial Crime “Global Governance Frameworks – Avoiding Cracks” with: David Lewis, Chady el-khoury, Dr Reem Alshamsi and expertly hosted by Mohamed Shalo.  Rather than focus on cracks in an assumed existing comprehensive framework I raised the issue of problematic gaps that had long existed and needed tackling.  The Author suggested something new he hadn’t said in public before after many months of discussions with many colleagues at the Global Coalition to Fight Financial Crime and else ..read more

For more than 100 years, concern around crime and its international nature has been identified and responses to it are still being proposed. For 70 years, The United Nations has played a significant part in identifying and urging Member States to agree instruments to tackle many of the main crime types, including drugs, organised crime corruption, terrorism, human trafficking, people smuggling, arms trafficking, wildlife trade for endangered species and even recently attempting to do so on cybercrime. Before that the League of Nations was less interested but still focussed on drugs. slavery ..read more

Today FCN is publishing a Financial Crime Dashboard for Australia. Main threats are from fraud, drugs and arms trafficking, corruption, people smuggling, theft and cybercrime, child sexual exploitation, green crimes including wildlife trafficking and illicit tobacco. Areas for improvement include on prosecutions and convictions for money laundering and foreign corruption as well as on human trafficking, although significant increases in prosecutions and convictions for child sexual exploitation have been reported. in terms of asset recoveries, a target of AUD600 Million was set to be recover ..read more