Typology of Money Laundering Schemes

Info: 6219 words (25 pages) Dissertation
Published: 1st Mar 2022

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Abstract

In the period of globalization, the problem of receiving and turnover of “dirty” money becoming more important and requires global attention. Because illegal financing and sources of income is not the problem of one particular country, but the whole world. And taking into account, the fact that it is quite difficult to track the corridors for obtaining such money, it requires consolidation of knowledge and efforts of the countries that are interested in stopping the spread of financial crime. The relevance of the topic is due to the growing number of criminal organizations and their fraudulent operations, as well as the need for closer international cooperation in the fight against the laundering of criminal operations through the development of common rules and measures to counter this type of crime. Due to the high threat of this type of crime for economic, financial, social and political institutions of states and regions, studying the analysis and development of measures and norms, that timely meet the challenges threatening the financial stability and security of states becomes one of the most important tasks of the world community. From the point of view of effective development of the market system of the world economy, consideration of this problem is important. The legalization (laundering) of funds obtained by criminal activities, inevitably leads to an increase in crime and corruption on a global scale. Accordingly, the proliferation and establishment of such offenses is a serious threat to any country, as well as to the entire world community

Keywords: AML, FATF, EAG.

The problem of money laundering is rooted in the distant past. However, the scale of its growth in recent years is most relevant with the development of scientific and technological progress, which, unfortunately, well-informed criminals successfully use in committing a variety of socially dangerous acts, including what is rightly called the main danger of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries “terrorism”. In order to disguise their actions, they use the most diverse methods of laundering the “dirty” money that is earned as a result of their crimes.

Money laundering earned by crime activities is a necessary blood for the functioning of organized heart in the economic sphere. The globalization of the world economy and the growing efficiency of capital markets allow individuals, various firms, enterprises and organizations to transfer huge amounts of money both in domestic financial markets and from one country to another. Such efficiency and relative lack of control over the movement of funds provide criminal elements with the opportunity to legalize money obtained from illegal activities at the national and international levels easily.

Accurate information about the amount of money laundered in the world does not exist, however, according to some experts, in this area the annual volume of funds ranges from 2 to 5 percent of world GDP – over 600 billion US dollars.

Obviously, “dirty” money laundering has a significant negative impact on the distribution of domestic and international monetary resources and weakens macroeconomic stability. This suggests a quite logical conclusion that the fight against this phenomenon is one of the most important strategic directions in the fight against organized crime.

These following important tasks are completed in the way of combating against the legalization of illegal funds:

Firstly, related crimes are investigated, since money laundering is only one of the stages of criminal activity, usually, this is the final step. It is the smuggling of goods, raw materials, weapons, drugs, illegal trade in precious metals, illegal entrepreneurship, violation of currency transactions, tax avoidance.

Secondly, it protects the legal economy from criminal investments. There is an opinion that capital with a criminal shade, having entered the legal financial turnover, are beginning to serve to the development of the national economy. This statement is considered to be “true” not only wrong, but extremely dangerous. This indirectly encourages illegal actions, as a result of which, money is earned. Indulgence of such actions is unacceptable. In addition, criminal capital no matter what and somehow remains under the control of the owners and serves them on a first priority. As a result, the economies of individual countries become dependent on the criminal organizations operating in their territory. This phenomenon is observed in some countries of Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Currently, operations for the legalization of criminal proceeds are in international scale. Professional criminals act internationally, not only because they seek to take over increasingly large-scale markets. The risk of being caught is reduced due to serious problems between law enforcement agencies in different countries and due to the lack of a legal framework, so national borders are an element that promotes rather than prevents impunity from money laundering. Using gaps in international law, individual criminals and criminal groups, the number of which, sadly, is constantly growing, take part in illegal activities in global markets and are involved in international money laundering. For the legalization of criminal funds, they choose the weakest link in the chain, that is, the country where bank secrecy is the strictest, and law enforcement oversight of banking activities is the least effective or even absent. As a rule, the governments of the countries concerned, interested in international cooperation and investment, do not pay attention to the origin of the capital, which flows into their financial system. And as from political sight of my opinion this is the required step for emerging countries, by which they may attract much more funds by this tactic. Thus, the “laundered” money penetrates the first, local and after, international financial markets.

Dirty cash is often mixed with legal one derived from ordinary business activity and declared as “clean” money. In such cases, criminals often run businesses that sell or provide cash operated services (for example, restaurants or merchant and/or grocery stores). Revenues from such enterprises are mixed with dirty money and transferred to bank accounts without any suspicion and questions.

Actions to counter Money Laundering

With the expansion of the international financial market in the early 80s, developed countries began to be involved in the fight against money laundering. The development of anti-money laundering recommendations was initiated at the international level by the Banking Operations Rules and Methods Committee (Brazilian Committee), which includes representatives of the central banks of Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada, the USA, France, Switzerland, Sweden and Japan In December 1988, the Committee adopted a declaration “On preventing the use of the banking system for the purpose of laundering money obtained by criminal means”. International efforts to prevent money laundering also include:

United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs And Psychotropic Substances, 1988;
G8 Senior Expert Group 40 recommendations to combat transnational organized crime, Paris, 12 April 1996
Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime, Strasbourg, 1990;
Other documents

The need to coordinate the actions of national law enforcement agencies at the international level led to the creation, in accordance with the decision of the G7 summit in Paris in 1989, of a special international commission to combat money laundering. Thus, the well-known FATF was born.

The FATF (Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering) is an international intergovernmental organization that sets standards, develops and encourages policies to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The FATF was established at the G7 summit in Paris in 1989. Currently, the commission consists of 33 members – 31-member states and 2 international organizations (European Commission and Gulf Cooperation Council), as well as more than 20 observers: five FATF-type regional organizations and more than 15 other international bodies.

recommendations were first prepared in 1990, and in 1996 they were revised in the light of experience gained over a six-year period and changes in the legalization of criminal proceeds. Recommendations are offered only as basic universal principles for the organization of the fight against money laundering, which each country must implement in accordance with the specific situation and features of the national constitutional system.

Recommendations consist of three main sections:

recommendations for improving the national legislative system;
measures in the financial sphere, namely the role of credit and financial institutions in the fight against money laundering;
measures to enhance international cooperation in the field of countering the laundering of capital.

The FATF constantly monitors the observance of these recommendations by members of the commission. In addition, member countries of the organization are obliged to exercise mutual control over the fulfillment of the commission’s requirements.

During the commission’s operations, it was found that as the anti-money laundering systems of individual countries were strengthened, criminal structures began to look for gaps in the laws of the countries.

This situation necessitated the revitalization of the commission’s work with these countries. The FATF prepared a special report on the problem of these countries, which gave criteria for identifying countries that do not take adequate measures to combat money laundering and lists those countries. The Commission proposed a system of measures for these countries, advised when conducting transactions with them.

In July 2000, the US authorities instructed the country’s financial institutions to monitor the implementation of operations with 15 countries that do not take adequate measures to combat money laundering and do not cooperate with the world community in this area. As well as with the Department of Financial Crimes of Ministry of Finance of the USA

(Financial Crimes Enforcement Network – FinCEN) was sent out a circular (Advisory) on the system of measures necessary for adoption by financial institutions when conducting operations with financial institutions of countries in the “black list”.

According to organizations such as FinCEN and FATF, the anti-money laundering system in a number of these countries has the following serious flaws:

1. There is no legislative base corresponding to international norms to combat the legalization of criminal proceeds.

2. The articles of the Criminal Code relating to money laundering are not practical and ineffective.

3. There is no customer identification system when conducting a large number of financial transactions.

4. Financial institutions are not required to inform law enforcement agencies about suspicious transactions.

5. There is no effective system of control over the activities of financial institutions.

6. There is no effective system for providing information to law enforcement agencies of other countries in the framework of bilateral international agreements to prove the facts of money laundering. For example, this situation in Russia is complicated by the lack of a single center for countering the legalization of illegal incomes.

Accordingly, all US banking institutions are advised to strengthen control over commercial and investment operations related to the credit and financial institutions of unreliable countries, which are carried out using non-standard, unidentifiable and incomprehensible schemes, as well as operations that are carried out from these countries through third countries if it is not due to commercial necessity.

In order to protect the international financial system from possible risks associated with conducting operations with countries that do not cooperate adequately in the field of anti-money laundering, the FATF and FinCEN organizations recommend to member countries that the following measures should be taken with regard to the above countries:

– opening an account in a financial institution is possible only if the applicant provides the applicant with genuine information about the account holder;

– on the part of financial institutions, special attention should be paid to any operations related to the countries that do not wish to cooperate in the fight against money laundering. In particular, it is recommended that financial institutions regularly provide law enforcement agencies with information on transactions which exceeds a certain amount of money and carried out with the participation of individuals or legal entities of the above countries;

– under certain circumstances, the possibility of restricting operations with the countries concerned or even their complete termination should not be excluded.

These measures are not considered as must apply, and the decision on their use is at the discretion of the particular financial institution.

However, it is not only FATF that contributes to the fight against money laundering. In October 2004, an organization called the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (EAG) was created in the image and likeness of the FATF. It was established by 6 states – Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Russia and Tajikistan.

The founding conference of the EAG was held in October 2005 in Moscow. During this conference, representatives of the competent authorities of the EAG founding states signed constituent documents, as well as approved the issues of competence of the organization being created. The conference decided to grant observer status to organizations in the UK, Georgia, Italy, USA, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, as well as FATF, World Bank, IMF, CSTO, EurAsEC, Interpol, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

The main objectives of the EAG are:

– assistance in the distribution of international standards in the sphere of combating money laundering and financing of terrorism;

– development and implementation of joint activities by units of financial intelligence services of countries of the region;

– analysis of trends in the legalization of criminal funds and the financing of terrorism and the exchange of experience in countering such crimes;

– assessing the effectiveness of measures to combat criminal proceeds and the financing of terrorism, coordinating cooperation with international organizations, working groups and interested countries.

Currently, Uzbekistan is accepted as an EAG member, and Afghanistan and Armenia are accepted as observers.

In any country of the world, even the most prosperous in all respects, there is a certain percentage of people who do not want to live by the rules of a civilized society. They invent all sorts of ways to obey, and often they simply violate the laws, as a result of which they receive the revenues, which are usually called illegal, or criminal.

There are enough ways laundering illegal income. They are studied by experts in the fight against illegal incomes, classified according to various criteria, and develop methods to counter these schemes. This process takes enormous human and monetary resources, and nevertheless, money laundering schemes, like the flu virus, constantly mutate depending on the conditions in which they are implemented. Currently, there are several typologies of schemes developed by various international organizations designed to combat this evil. The most well-known organization of this type is the already mentioned FATF.

It should be noted that the schemes have their features not only depending on the area of their application, but also on the characteristics of a particular national economy and even the political system. The schemes used in the UK are different from the Japanese, and the American can be easily distinguished from the Argentine. But the most characteristic differences are the schemes used in countries with transitional economies – Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Kazakhstan and other countries, where the legislation changes more often and there are many loopholes that criminals successfully use.

The most important element in the process of laundering illegal income is corruption, without the implementation of scheme is almost impossible. The scale of corruption directly depends on the stability and stability of the economic system and the country’s ability to resist crime in all spheres of life.

Many books, publications, conferences and seminars are devoted to the fight against shadow market capital, crime in the economic environment, the legalization of income obtained by illegal activities, where the ways in which dirty money is converted into completely legal means and bloody criminals become good owners of all firms are considered, investment funds, banks, and sometimes high-level politicians.

Money laundering schemes can be both the simplest and require serious analysis. As a rule, there are not too many “long-playing” schemes, since their existence is limited due to the work of law enforcement agencies to identify and eliminate them. Often, they are invented for one or several specific transactions, and so-called one-day firms are often used. It is rather difficult to fight with such firms, since the legislation of almost any country allows their existence. And while the firm exists, it cannot be called a one-day event. But when it ceases to exist, it is extremely difficult to deal with the consequences of its activities.

Most dirty money laundering schemes in emerging countries are schemes using import operations. This is the typical scheme: Illegal incomes are transferred to the accounts of front companies, which convert the national currency and transfer funds abroad as payment for import contracts. Abroad, further manipulation of money takes place – they are transferred from one account to another, until the exported capital acquires a legal status.

What ways are enriched by dishonest “figures”, few for whom is the secret behind seven seals. The embezzlement of loans, especially government loans, deception of partners, the creation of financial pyramids, the attraction of public funds and the collapse of banks, the privatization of industry, trade and many others. For example, those banks that raised rapidly during the period of initial accumulation of capital and later went bankrupt, in fact, part of the money was simply taken abroad and safely stashed away. Then these funds were put into legitimate business abroad or, even in their own country.

Bogus companies, as a rule, are registered by criminals with false passports, on non-resident citizens, often on foreigners. Funds are received on their accounts on legitimate reasons from real organizers of frauds. In the future, these firms “dissolve”, and the organizers for uncompleting of contracts do not make any claims to them. Such firms are created for a very short time. Their activity comes to the attention of the tax authorities only after three months depending on their type of registration (there are some types of companies which get attention after 5 years of operation), when it is time for reporting. The tax inspectorate may suspend the movement of funds on an account that by this time is no longer needed and put the company in line for verification. In the field of view of currency control, the firm gets attention 180 days (sometimes after 365 days). This is the period during which the firm must receive the goods, notify the authorized bank and close the passport of the transaction. However, information about violators comes much later, given the peculiarities of the interaction of bodies and agents of currency control. By this time, the company has long ceased operations, the responsible parties have disappeared, there are no documents. In such cases, it is impossible to verify the enterprise and impose penalties, and it is almost impossible to find managers.

It is worth paying attention to the fact that such illegal operations abroad are carried out through authorized banks that are agents of currency control. The security service of these banks can verify the authenticity of the company’s founders’ documents, identify the identity of their managers, promptly identify illegal transactions and, accordingly, act or inform the competent authorities. But, looking ahead, it should be said that the obligation to report suspicious financial transactions to the competent authorities will be fully fulfilled only after the adoption of relevant legislative acts and as on my banking experience even with these regulations we faced way much barriers to find real purpose of the company and to find the “initiators”. Even, when I find out the real purpose of such criminal firm, there’s not going to be anything for proof as on papers they’re regular firm which do import and export operations.

In the scheme using export operations, delivery of goods abroad to one’s own, purchased or established firms is used. As a rule, raw materials are supplied. It is sold abroad, the company does not receive money, it is not returned to the country and, accordingly, it is legalized abroad. In these cases, they also use fake companies, which are not a pity to quit in three months and open new ones. And then it is impossible to find people. This department is widely used because there is an underestimation of prices for export goods.

The establishment of dummy firms with false documents is always associated with a certain risk; therefore, fraudsters often use a scheme for transferring money for fictitious services. This sphere practically falls out of currency control, since a criminal can be caught only in the case of disclosing the entire scheme for obtaining illegal income prior to its legalization.

Often used illegal transfer of cash (for example, in Russia), when the rubles are deposited in the exchange office of a Russian bank, and the foreign currency is obtained abroad. Foreigners involved in the “shuttle” business in Russia receive significant income from the trade of imported goods, but they cannot export the proceeds in rubles or in currency without declaring. Therefore, firms or banks are established with the participation of foreign capital or one hundred percent foreign capital. In the future, the scheme is very simple: the revenue is given to the exchange office, and firms transfer this currency to their homeland under import contracts. As soon as the inspection begins, the documentation is destroyed or disappears, foreigners from Russia leave, the location of the managers is extremely difficult to establish. This problem will remain as long as the shuttle business exists.

Considering the tightening of control over cash circulation and the legalization of economic life, especially shadow turnover, violators often use the following foreign currency cashing scheme. Entrepreneurs buy or establish firms abroad, open their representative offices or branches in their homeland and transfer significant amounts of currency to these accounts under import contracts. And although the representative offices should not carry out economic activities, they are actively engaged in it. At the same time, part of the funds is paid to foreigners for travel and other expenses, since foreign citizens can legally receive cash in foreign currency. After cashing part of the money goes to the shadow of turnover or exported abroad.

A very large amount of money enters the shadow turnover from the foreign economic activity of enterprises – due to the manipulation of prices, volumes of goods received, clearance of one product at customs instead of another. In such cases, the payment of customs duties is significantly underestimated. In their country, the goods are sold at inflated prices, and the resulting delta plus revenue from the sale of unrecorded goods completely or partially falls into the shadow turnover and goes out of control. Thus, the funds do not come out of the shadow turnover, so that their owners do not pay taxes and are not brought to criminal liability. In the end, of course, part of the money is still legalized. One of the options is the introduction of funds as personal labor contributions to the authorized capital of enterprises. Large amounts are usually made, but in several stages. In the same way, deposits are made to deposit accounts of banks, deposits in foreign banks, shares and other securities are acquired. Other ways to legalize illegal income are associated with certain losses. If the firm will donate illegal money as trading revenue, it will have to pay a lot of taxes: on profit, on wages, etc.

Various schemes are practiced all over the world, and often this circumstance casts a shadow on financial institutions that have a good reputation. For example, ads appear on the Internet offering to organize their own offshore bank for 8 weeks for less than 10,000 USD, without any additional checks on the origin of funds. Placing in an offshore zone means that the owner of such a bank will receive significant tax breaks and confidentiality and will be able to avoid tight financial control by government agencies. A special commission of the US Senate took up the investigation of such proposals, since offshore banks are often used to launder illegally obtained money, and US banks may become unwitting participants in various “dirty” schemes. The organization of such banks is possible in countries such as Montenegro, or in the Caribbean. In Montenegro, a bank organized for $10K is a full-fledged financial institution that can have a correspondent account with the National Bank of Montenegro, and through it – access to the banks of Switzerland, the USA and other countries. This allows you to organize highly effective schemes for laundering money obtained from the drug business, illegal arms trade, etc.

The British branch of the international organization Transparency International in due time sent a report on methods to combat money laundering in the UK to the Financial Control Service of the United Kingdom, to the Treasury (Ministry of Finance). The document analyzes in detail the gaps in the legislation that allow carrying out operations and frauds with money laundering through British trusts and companies, as well as using the differences in the legislation of Great Britain and its offshore zones:

(Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Guernsey and Jersey, possession of the British Kingdom in the Caribbean).

The main problem raised in the report is that, along with most of the trusts and companies in the UK that conduct legal activities, there are those who provide services, not caring much about who is their customers are and where they get the money from. Often, either by mistake or deliberately, they provide services to people involved in corruption or money laundering. Specific to the UK is that trusts were originally built to preserve the anonymity of their owners and clients.

The most common scheme of money laundering is the following mechanism: first, money comes to the bank, then it is transferred to a trust or company, and then used to buy property, objects of art, jewelry, yachts, cars, etc.

The way out of this situation, the authors of the report see the adoption of additional or revision of the existing legislation on the activities of trusts and companies, which would effectively combat the implementation of such schemes.

As for offshore zones, many of them introduced British legislation, but as a result of various reasons, there are currently differences between local laws and British ones.

There is also a paradoxical situation, when the British government is interested in adopting a regulatory act in its overseas territories, without introducing it in the United Kingdom, which also puzzles Transparency International experts.

The only way to overcome these differences is to unify legislation for the UK itself and for its offshore zones and overseas territories, which will allow law enforcement officials to more effectively carry out actions to catch and punish criminals.

No matter how different the opinions and position of specialists in the field of combating dirty money laundering are, almost everyone agrees on one thing – the lion’s share of crimes related to the legalization of illegal income is directly related to the activities of credit organizations. It is through banks that various schemes are implemented through which money laundering is carried out. The difference is only in the way and type of participation of banks in these operations: either banks carry out financial operations related to legalization, while pretending that this does not concern them, or they themselves are interested in one way or another in carrying out such operations.

Suppose enterprise 1 buys equipment from enterprise 2. In a bank whose client is 2, an account is opened, the owner of which becomes 1. From it, without a payment order, the money is transferred to the seller, whose account is in the same bank. During the operation, the bank takes 3 percent of the amount of payment in cash. As a result, the seller has the opportunity not to reflect the increase in his revenue and profits (after all, there are no payment documents) without paying the corresponding taxes to the state, and the buyer increases expenses, by reducing the tax base when calculating the income tax. At the same time, the bank accounts themselves are not reflected either in the report to the RCC or in the working list of the bank. The cash settlement center cannot trace this operation, because financial operations carried out inside one financial and credit institution do not pass through it. The bankers themselves prefer to call such a scheme not money laundering, but “non-standard banking operation”. Most of them recognize that such a money laundering scheme in Russia has long become a system. True, each of them did not fail to make the reservation that the bank he headed did not engage in such operations and does not.

The reputation of the bank and its value

The world’s foremost banks are providing intensive assistance in combating money laundering, as well as corruption and the financing of terrorism. They do this by applying an effective and dynamic risk-based approach. In this regard, banks are actively seeking to comply with relevant legal regulations, instructions, and preserve their reputation, thus trying to prevent, detect, and report on suspicions of money laundering.

The basic principles of such activities are as follows:

Banks, above all, must ensure that they do not work with funds that are known to them as criminal or for which they expect to receive information that such funds are obtained by criminal means, and also that they do not work with money, aimed at financing criminal and illegal activities in general, and that they comply with the relevant provisions of anti-money laundering legislation, including laws and regulations on the imposition of sanctions and prohibitions and on bribing officials.

Protecting your own reputation is the most important part of the policy pursued by banks. It is also necessary to cooperate with the competent authorities in criminal investigations in accordance with the law. Banks create and maintain anti-money laundering programs. At the same time, they try not to disturb normal relations with clients who have proven themselves to be honest, and also not to create certain obstacles to the implementation of daily banking.

An important point in the fight against money laundering is the reporting on business management, which is recognized as a risk factor. In this process, it is necessary to practice the constant and active management of all vulnerable areas in order to ensure a balance of risk and return.

Banks establish effective anti-money laundering programs, as well as customer acceptance standards and customer identification programs, including to prevent prohibited business relationships, organize appropriate monitoring and filtering of unusual or suspicious activities, as well as reporting on it, provide training.

In their activities, banks adhere to the policy of establishing business relations with clients of all nationalities and ethnic groups on an equal basis, provided that the client has an impeccable business and financial reputation, legal origin of funds and the use of funds for lawful purposes. Services are provided only to customers with an impeccable reputation, which, as far as you can expect from them, intend to be serviced at the bank and conduct business properly.

Banks usually classify risks by degrees: higher degree, high, medium, low. With a higher and higher degree, the whole complex of measures is taken to prevent money laundering, with medium – additional measures are taken if necessary, with a low – measures according to local laws, that is, minimum standards.

There is no generally accepted or agreed list of industries and activities, which would indicate the specific risks of using financial institutions for money laundering. Therefore, banks are developing a list of activities that are vulnerable to money laundering, considering objective and subjective criteria that focus, among other things, on money laundering issues, including the possible risk of corruption and crime in a certain area.

In addition to all this, in order to prevent money laundering, banks are required to conduct monitoring, which may include an automated (computerized) review of workflows after their implementation, manual verification, review of individual operations, special or targeted review, sorting or filtering instructions payment (wire transfers) before they are made in order to prevent the creation of funds in violation of sanctions, bans and other measures.

The reputation of the bank is its share capital. Every ordinary employee, as well as a member of the board, must take care of its protection. The damage inflicted on the reputation may affect the market situation, and also lead to the unwillingness of customers to continue working with the bank or to restrict its business activity by the regulatory authorities.

Summary

To sum up all the mentioned, it was determined that money laundering is a process, as a result of which money obtained in an illegal way is transformed into legal income. Through this process, the availability as well as illegal sources and use of these funds is hidden. Sources of dirty money are actions related to transnational crime, terrorism, the sale of narcotic and psychotropic substances, fraud, and corruption. Legalization of criminal proceeds includes three stages: placement, stratification, and integration. In turn, each of these stages is determined by a set of actions aimed at concealing the source and the very method of legalizing money received from illegal activities. To combat this virus there should be settled rules and median by which, all financial and intel services work collaboratively in order to find, and eliminate all the possible ways and schemes of money laundering. Due to the blockchain architecture AML system faced a big problem so far seen as almost impossible to fight against as fighting with bank transactions. This is the threat which is more important and more dangerous to FATF than offshore zones and banks, as all the transfers on the blockchain and flow can remain 100% hidden and opening an account on blockchain system doesn’t require physical or even legit information about the owner of the wallet.