In many countries, the real estate sector is vulnerable to money laundering due to a high number of factors including; the high value of assets, price fluctuations and speculation within the market, difficulties in assessing the true value of a house, and the fact that the legal owner is not necessarily the economic owner. In this book, the authors identify a total of 25 characteristics which render a property susceptible to money laundering. The more such characteristics a property exhibits, the more suspicious it becomes. The authors also discover that some of these characteristics weigh heavier than others. Combining economic, econometric and criminological analysis, this multidisciplinary approach shows how to detect criminal investment in the real estate sector. This well-researched book will appeal to government authorities responsible for combating money laundering, international organizations such as the IMF, the UN, the Worldbank and the EU, as well as financial intelligence units in all countries. Real estate associations, real estate research centers, criminologists and economists will also find this book invaluable.
During the last few decades, corrupt financial practices were increasingly being monitored in many countries around the globe. The past few decades have been eventful for these issues. Today, tackling money laundering and terrorism financing are considered key issues in developed and developing countries alike. Eradication of money laundering and terrorism financing through a holistic approach of awareness, prevention, and enforcement is a current need. It has enabled the birth of new regulatory regimes based on strict compliance, robust processes, and technology. One of the many problems with this is the lack of general awareness about all these issues among various stakeholders including researchers and practitioners. Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing in Global Financial Systems deepens the discourse about money laundering, terrorism financing, and risk management in a modern-day environment. It provides a fascinating and invaluable guide for understanding the theory, practice, and cases of these topics. Split into two sections, the first being money laundering and terrorism financing and the second being financial governance and risk management, the chapters create comprehensive knowledge on these acts of crime in the financial industry by defining the crimes themselves, the many challenges and impacts, and potential solutions. This book is ideal for government officials, financial professionals, policymakers, academicians, business professionals, managers, IT specialists, researchers, and students.
This book examines two types of transnational money laundering: the use of offshores and wire transfers to “invest” in real estate; and agribusiness, a nebulous activity that is difficult to regulate. The author also examines current international mechanisms to combat money-laundering; whether these efforts have been successful or unsuccessful; and whether multilateral instruments are an effective tool in the war against international organized crime. As national borders have opened and trade barriers have fallen, transnational crime has grown at unprecedented levels. The current situation, better revealed by the so-called “Panama Papers,” is a result of a lack of local cooperation in the investigations, prosecution, and/or extradition of criminals. Governments profit from ill-gotten wealth hosting international criminal enterprises in their own territories, thus providing a fertile ground for illicit practices, closing their eyes to the nexus among false or inappropriate identification, fraudulent records, corruption, and money laundering. If these types of transnational money-laundering are allowed to remain as they are currently treated, the shift in the financial paradigm, from centralized and regulated to decentralized and “unregulated,” would allow for the continuation of some of the most dangerous criminal activity. In this timely book, the author presents arguments that by “following the money,” capital movements involved in transnational money laundering through real estate and agribusiness can be examined, revealed, and understood.
Revised and updated edition of the Globe and Mail and Amazon bestselling book “If you want to understand war in the 21st century, read this to get part of the story.” — Robert Spalding, US Brigadier General (retired) “This book reads like a thriller and is stranger than fiction. Gripping, racy and exciting, it is difficult to put down. A tale of gambling, narcotics, tycoons, criminal gangs and Communists. And the shocking part is that it’s not a novel, it is all true.” — Benedict Rogers, CEO Hong Kong Watch In 1982 three of the most powerful men in Asia met in Hong Kong. They would decide how Hong Kong would be handed over to the People’s Republic of China and how Chinese business tycoons Henry Fok and Li Ka-Shing would help Deng Xiaoping realize the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic and global ambitions. That meeting would not only change Vancouver but the world. Billions of dollars in Chinese investment would soon reach the shores of North America’s Pacific coast. B.C. government casinos became a tool for global criminals to import deadly narcotics into Canada and launder billions of drug cash into Vancouver real estate. And it didn't happen by accident. A cast of accomplices — governments hungry for revenue, casino, and real estate companies with ties to shady offshore wealth, professional facilitators including lawyers and bankers, an aimless RCMP that gave organized crime room to grow — all combined to cause this tragedy. There was greed, folly, corruption, conspiracy, and wilful blindness. Decades of bad policy allowed drug cartels, first and foremost the Big Circle Boys — powerful transnational narco-kingpins with ties to corrupt Chinese officials, real estate tycoons, and industrialists — to gain influence over significant portions of Canada’s economy. Many looked the other way while B.C.’s primary industry, real estate, ballooned with dirty cash. But the unintended social consequences are now clear: a fentanyl overdose crisis raging in major cities throughout North America and life spans falling for the first time in modern Canada, and a runaway housing market that has devastated middle-class income earners. This story isn’t just about real estate and fentanyl overdoses, though. Sam Cooper has uncovered evidence that shows the primary actors in so-called “Vancouver Model” money laundering have effectively made Canada’s west coast a headquarters for corporate and industrial espionage by the CCP. And these ruthless entrepreneurs have used Vancouver and Canada to export their criminal model to other countries around the world including Australia and New Zealand. Meanwhile, Cooper finds that the RCMP’s 2019 arrest of its top intelligence official, Cameron Ortis, raises many frightening questions. Could Chinese transnational criminals and state actors targeting Canada’s industrial and technological crown jewels have gained protection from the Mounties? Could China and Iran have insight into Canada's deepest national security secrets and influence on investigations? Ortis had oversight of many investigations into transnational money laundering networks and insight into sensitive probes of suspects seeking to undermine Canada’s democracy and infiltrate the United States, according to the evidence Cooper has found. Wilful Blindness is a powerful narrative that follows the investigators who refused to go along with institutionalized negligence and corruption that enabled the Vancouver Model, with Cooper drawing on extensive interviews with the whistle-blowers; thousands of pages of government and court documents obtained through legal applications; and large caches of confidential material available exclusively to Cooper. The book culminates with a shocking revelation showing how deeply Canada has been compromised, and what needs to happen, to get the nation back on track with its “Five Eyes” allies.
The publication is divided into three main parts : the first deals with global issues, the second with national issues and in particular, national strategy formulation; and the third with financial and professional sector procedures. This second edition now includes additional information on understanding how terrorism is financed. It incorporates both the international standard arising from the revised Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering 40 Recommendations and the Special Nine Recommendations.
Although the practice of disguising the illicit origins of money dates back thousands of years, the concept of money laundering as a multidisciplinary topic with social, economic, political and regulatory implications has only gained prominence since the 1980s. This groundbreaking volume offers original, state-of-the-art research on the current money laundering debate and provides insightful predictions and recommendations for future developments in the field. The contributors to this volume academics, practitioners and government representatives from around the world offer a number of unique perspectives on different aspects of money laundering. Topics discussed include the history of money laundering, the scale of the problem, the different types of money laundering, the cost to the private sector, and the effectiveness of anti-money laundering policies and legislation. The book concludes with a detailed and insightful synthesis of the problem and recommendations for additional steps to be taken in the future. Students, professors and practitioners working in economics, banking, finance and law will find this volume a comprehensive and invaluable resource.
"Money laundering is a problem of some magnitude internationally and has long term negative economic impacts. Brigitte Unger argues that today, money laundering is largely linked to fraud and that it is not only small islands and tax heavens that launder, but increasingly industrialized countries like the US, Australia the Netherlands and the UK. Well-established financial markets and growing economies with sound political and social structures attract launderers in the same way as they attract honest capital. The book gives an interdisciplinary overview of the state-of-the-art of money laundering as well as describing the legal problems of defining and fighting money laundering. It then goes on to present a number of economic models designed to measure money laundering and applies these to measuring the size of laundering in the Netherlands and Australia. The book also gives an overview of techniques and potential effects of money laundering identified and measured so far in the literature. It adds to this debate by calculating the effects of laundering on crime and economic growth. This book will be of great interest to lawyers, financial experts, economists, political scientists, as well as to government ministries, international and national organizations and central banks."--Jacket.
This book explores the infiltration of Italian and Russian organised crime in the UK real estate market, assessing how vulnerable the UK is to these sorts of activities. It identifies the drivers behind the criminal choices and modus operandi of Italian and Russian organised crime groups, and the factors causing their mobility abroad. Investment of Criminal Proceeds into the Legitimate Economy broadens our knowledge on the relationship between criminal agency and criminogenic opportunity in a socio-economic and legal context. This book offers a critical insight into the criminal actors and operations of Italian and Russian organised crime groups, such as money laundering schemes in the real estate sector, whilst also exploring the role of crime facilitators. Drawing on interviews with prosecutors, law enforcement agents and investigative journalists, Investment of Criminal Proceeds into the Legitimate Economy explores how criminal investments adversely affect both law enforcement operations and socio-economic development in this area. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, law, organised crime, policymakers, and all those interested in how Italian and Russian organised crime operates in the UK real estate market.
How exactly is money laundered? The answer to this question is not well understood – and for this very reason, costly prevention measures remain ineffective. This much-needed book provides the first in-depth explanation of the methods used by intelligent criminals to amass wealth from large-scale trafficking in drugs, arms, and human beings, as well as from less odious crimes. The author shows clearly not only why existing approaches to combat money laundering are bound to fail but also how money launderers easily circumvent such measures. Based on qualitative interviews with both alleged criminals and prevention experts, detailed illustrations of concrete steps taken by intelligent and specialized perpetrators of money laundering allow practitioners to anticipate and effectively combat this type of crime. The author fully documents such aspects of money launderers’ behaviour as the following: resources required; dealing with detection risks; and international mobility. A central chapter covers in depth the various markets, institutions, and facilities that are particularly favourable to money laundering, and original insights accompany the presented findings with relevant quotations from the interviewees. The author offers tailored recommendations for different professional groups, including bankers, prosecutors, defence lawyers, and judges. In its critical questioning of the logic behind anti-money laundering regulations and their costly implementation, the book demonstrates that either the existing measures of prevention are drastically tightened and extended to almost all branches of the economy or the financial sector is relieved of the burden it bears and alternative ways of fighting this type of crime are sought instead. It will prove enormously valuable to understanding and investigating white-collar and financial crime, and be welcomed by practitioners and professionals in financial markets, banking, criminal lawyers, and compliance experts, as well as academia.
In the aftermath of recent multiple leaks such as the Panama Papers, the Swiss leaks, the Lux leaks, and the Bahama leaks, this book offers an interesting view on the underlying conflicting interests that impede the adoption of more effective legislation to stop money laundering by way of the financial system. The central position of the book is that the declared goals underlying the criminalization of money laundering have not been fulfilled. The effectiveness of the anti-money laundering regime in Germany is assessed by examining the indirect effects, collateral consequences, and positive interpretations of the law in action and of the law inaction; reducing the issue to a question of symbolic effectiveness does not reflect the complexity of the matter. What is demonstrated, is that the goals attributed to the regime were too ambitious, and that a lower degree of effectiveness has been accepted in order to balance the inherent political, economic and financial conflicting interests. Unlike other volumes focusing on this issue, this book deals with the implementation of the legislation and the consequences thereof, and is primarily aimed at legal sociologists, sociology of law researchers, criminal lawyers, criminologists with an interest in white collar crime and political scientists studying measures against illicit financial flows and the concrete implementation of anti-money laundering laws. The book will be of interest to both international policymakers and consultants as well as their counterparts in Germany for instance working on improving the instruments to fight organized crime and prevent the financing of terrorism through money laundering. The complexity of the anti-money laundering regime and all the variables are exhaustively and critically reviewed in the assessment, thereby providing complete instructions for future legislative steps. The case study regarding the situation in Germany maximizes readers’ insights into concrete effects of the implementation of international anti-money laundering standards at a national level, and the opinions of professionals working in the field and of experts on the law-making process are also illuminating. Moreover, the book equips non-German speakers with the information needed to deal with the extensive German legal scholarly production on article 261 of the German criminal code and the current internal political debate on the matter. Verena Zoppei is a Fellow Researcher at the International Security Division of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. Specific to this book: • Broadens your understanding of the complexity of the anti-money laundering regime • Provides complete instructions for future legislative steps • Offers a qualitative and multidisciplinary approach of the money laundering offence • Also equips non-German readers/speakers with a handle on the extensive German legal scholarly production on article 261 of the German criminal code This is Volume 12 in the International Criminal Justice Series
