Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon on Monday demanded that the widow and advisors of former Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet pay US$77 million to a Spanish charity for his regime’s victims within the next 10 days.
If the money is not paid, the dictator’s widow, Luicia Hiriart, and three associates, Oscar Aitken, Pablo Granifo and Hernan Donoso, will all face extradition to Spain on charges of embezzlement and money laundering and will have up to US$25 million worth of their assets frozen.
The judge intends to visit Chile with colleagues from the Spanish high court to oversee investigations against the four charged.
The money is sought by Spanish organization Foundación Salvador Allende to compensate the families of Spanish nationals killed during Pinochet's regime, which began after the 1973 military coup that toppled elected president Allende. This is the latest of Garzon’s charges against Pinochet and members of his inner circle.
Garzon arranged for the 1998 London arrest of the dictator on charges of genocide and terrorism. Pinochet was released after 16 months of extradition proceedings, but he was facing charges of tax evasion, embezzlement and money laundering until his death in 2006.
His family members and former legal advisor Aitken were acquitted of wrong-doing in previous cases and therefore cannot face retrial in Chile. However, evidence has emerged in recent years that Pinochet amassed a fortune in kick-backs from international arms deals and misappropriation of public funds. This wealth is apparently held in bank accounts all over the globe.
In 2005 the Salvador Allende charity received US$9 million after American-based Riggs bank was found guilty of holding illegal accounts for Pinochet. Following on from that case the organization petitioned Spanish courts to bring similar charges against Chilean Banco de Chile and two of its subsidiaries. Garzon postponed the case so that individuals at the bank could be identified and evidence collected against them.
Two of those charged yesterday are high-ranking officials at the Banco de Chile. Granifo is currently the firm’s president, while Dononso is a former head of the bank’s US operations. The bank was acquitted of wrongdoing in a 2006 US investigation into money laundering allegations against the bank's New York operations (ST. Oct 5, 2006).
Corruption charges also continue to emerge in Chile, with the arrest earlier this year of a former military aide to the dictator accused of misappropriating up to US$20 million in public funds. Human rights investigations against former secret police agents are also ongoing (ST. Sept 3).
In September 2008 the Chilean government announced that it would seek the return of US$26 million held in secret accounts for Pinochet from the Miami branches of four different banks including Banco de Chile and Spanish bank Santander (ST. Sept 30, 2008).
The Pinochet family has always denied corruption accusations made against the late dictator, insisting that their private wealth was accumulated thanks to financial prudence and wise investments.
SOURCE: El MERCURIO, LA TERCERA, EL PAIS.COM
By James Fowler ( editor@santiagotimes.cl )
Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chile. Show all posts
on Sunday, May 27, 2012
The People's Bank of China punished 12 financial institutions involved in money laundering in the first half of this year with fines totaling 2.25 million yuan ($328,654), the central bank revealed late Friday.
"We have checked a total of 1,084 financial organizations, which include 907 banking institutions, 71 securities and futures institutions and 106 insurance institutions," said head of the bank's anti-money laundering bureau, Tang Xu.
Tang would not name any of these organizations but did say he has seen more money flowing in and out of underground private banks through questionable dealings in recent years.
Those banks make illegal transactions by collecting idle capital and then promising high interest rates. They then lend money at even higher interest rates to reap profits.
"This illegal foreign currency dealing, money laundering, money lending at high interest and illegal fund raising has disturbed the country's economic stability," Tang said.
The central bank branches and foreign exchange regulators have helped police crack 42 money laundering cases involving about 84.4 billion yuan since last September.
China initiated anti-money laundering checks in the banking sector. The country set up an anti-money-laundering bureau in the central bank in 2003 and passed its first anti-money-laundering law in 2006.
Financial institutions violating the law could be fined as much as five million yuan. Co-conspirators face fines of up to 500,000 yuan.
Tang said China will strengthen anti-money-laundering checks in securities and insurance sectors as criminals began to shift their focus.
Source: China Daily
"We have checked a total of 1,084 financial organizations, which include 907 banking institutions, 71 securities and futures institutions and 106 insurance institutions," said head of the bank's anti-money laundering bureau, Tang Xu.
Tang would not name any of these organizations but did say he has seen more money flowing in and out of underground private banks through questionable dealings in recent years.
Those banks make illegal transactions by collecting idle capital and then promising high interest rates. They then lend money at even higher interest rates to reap profits.
"This illegal foreign currency dealing, money laundering, money lending at high interest and illegal fund raising has disturbed the country's economic stability," Tang said.
The central bank branches and foreign exchange regulators have helped police crack 42 money laundering cases involving about 84.4 billion yuan since last September.
China initiated anti-money laundering checks in the banking sector. The country set up an anti-money-laundering bureau in the central bank in 2003 and passed its first anti-money-laundering law in 2006.
Financial institutions violating the law could be fined as much as five million yuan. Co-conspirators face fines of up to 500,000 yuan.
Tang said China will strengthen anti-money-laundering checks in securities and insurance sectors as criminals began to shift their focus.
Source: China Daily
on Thursday, May 17, 2012
A cocaine boom in Europe and the continent’s strong currency have combined to fuel a thriving industry: euro laundering.
With the euro approaching $1.50 and soaring demand for cocaine in countries like Spain and Italy, Europe has become a far more lucrative place to do business for Latin American drug cartels than in previous years.
To obscure the origins of the funds, and escape government scrutiny in the process, the cartels use a complex system to launder their proceeds – much of which is landing on U.S. shores.
In late March, U.S. authorities arrested a man carrying a leather duffel bag who had just landed at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Santiago, Chile. Inside the bag was more than $1.9 million in cash, mostly in bundles of 500 euro and 200 euro notes.
U.S. and Chilean law enforcement officials believe the man was at the end of a money–laundering trail that begins in Europe. Over a period of four and a half years, he and his associates flew to the U.S. from Latin America some 280 times, openly toting more than $244 million worth of euros into the country, according to documents in a case brought by federal authorities in U.S. District Court in New York.
The big bills have become so symbolic of the lush life that they have recently crept into pop culture: The rapper Jay–Z’s video for Blue Magic – the debut single from his new album ’’American Gangster’’ – features a suitcase full of 500 euro notes and someone thumbing through a stack of them as Jay–Z raps the words, ’’the kilo business.’’ Hype Williams, director of the music video, said that he and Jay–Z chose euros because they are ’’more valuable’’ and because they wanted to ’’one–up’’ their hip–hop competitors by showing ’’the things people are into now.’’
The wads of euros carried by people like the man arrested at LAX are often the spoils of Europe–bound cocaine shipments – many of which transit through Africa, law–enforcement officials say.
Consumption of the drug has soared in much of Western Europe, according to a report released last year by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. In Italy, use of the drug rose to 2.1 percent of the general population in 2005 from 1.1 percent just four years earlier. In France, it tripled from 2000 to 2005, from 0.2 percent to 0.6 percent of the adult population. Cocaine use in England doubled from 1998 to 2006, according to Britain’s National Health Service, to 2.4 percent among adults.
Some narco–euros are laundered directly in Europe. But officials say the lion’s share is routed back to South America as cash and eventually ends up in the U.S.
’’This is still a cash business,’’ says Donald Semesky, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s head of financial–crimes investigations.
The first step is to convert small bills accumulated from thousands of street sales into 500 euro notes, which are easy to transport. Obtaining large quantities of these conspicuous notes, though, isn’t easy. So drug traffickers turn to specialized criminal rings – whose members are often involved in banking and real estate – to gain access to them, says Jose Manuel Alvarez Luna, chief of the money–laundering section of the Spanish police.
Spain is the center for such aggregation, according to authorities. A high–level Spanish banking official says a disproportionate share of the euro zone’s 500 euro notes, known as Bin Ladens for their scarcity, circulate in Spain.
The purpose of money–laundering is to disguise the criminal origins of ill–gotten gains so the funds appear legitimate. In most cases, laundering also helps criminals escape the notice of tax collectors and law–enforcement officials, boosting the value of their illegal proceeds.
Particularly since 9/11, tightened antilaundering regulations, known by banks as ’’know your customer’’ rules, have forced drug cartels to use more circuitous routes to circulate their funds around the globe.
For starters, the drug cartels do not themselves bring their narco–euros to the U.S. Instead, they usually sell their euros to South American black–market currency brokers or to foreign–exchange houses, known in Spanish as casas de cambio. The casas’ business as currency–exchange houses gives them a natural cover for moving large amounts of cash.
But in South America, there are few if any legitimate buyers for the huge sums of euros that the casas obtain – directly or indirectly – from the traffickers. So the casas funnel most of the narco–euros, sometimes via middlemen, through a chain of exchange houses in countries like Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Chile, says the DEA’s Mr. Semesky.
Often, the drug traffickers will sell their euros for Colombian pesos, and then the euros entering the U.S. no longer belong to the drug cartels but to the casa de cambio. In other cases, says Mr. Semesky, traffickers pay the casas to move funds into one of their U.S. bank accounts. These funds aren’t usually intended for withdrawal, but rather to pay various debts. This is achieved by wiring funds to the account of whomever the trafficker wishes to pay.
On a recent night at a bar on Madrid’s bustling Gran Via, a shirtless, tattooed waiter served tables and a buxom drag queen in a nurse’s uniform worked the crowd. In the trendy venue was a man in his 30s who talked by cellphone with his dealers. A few minutes later, he stepped outside, leaned into the window of a small car and handed over 60 euros, or about $90. For that sum, he received one gram of cocaine.
Such street sales have surged. Spain now has a larger percentage of its population (3 percent) using cocaine than the U.S. (2.3 percent), the previous top per–capita consumer, according to United Nations figures. In the first half of 2007, a kilo of cocaine sold for 33,000 euros, or about $43,900, in Madrid, more than triple the $12,500–$14,600 it fetched in Los Angeles and far more than the $13,000–$26,000 it sold for in New York, according to the Spanish police and the DEA.
Last year, seven European countries banded together to form the Maritime Analysis and Operations Center–Narcotics, or MAOC–N, an international agency dedicated to stopping drug traffic over the Atlantic. Already, the center is helping to make major busts.
In October, on the high seas off West Africa, Spanish authorities – acting on a tip from MAOC–N – seized an aging, cockroach–infested trawler. Called the Opnor, it allegedly had more than three metric tons of cocaine hidden below the floor of its cargo hold. Apparently registered in Panama, the vessel was captained by a grizzled Dutch man in his late 60s and is believed to have been heading toward Senegal.
The boat was following a typical pattern, authorities say. They surmise that, if it hadn’t been seized, its cocaine would have been warehoused in West Africa, where crushing poverty, weak law enforcement and, often, rampant corruption make for an ideal way station. The traffickers would have then sent the drugs to Europe by boat, either directly or via North Africa. Increasingly, say Spanish and American authorities, cocaine is also being flown from North Africa in small planes landing in Spain and Portugal on clandestine airstrips.
The traffickers were forced to take those routes because Spanish, Portuguese and British authorities were intercepting boats coming to Europe directly from South America.
Spain is a favorite entry point because of its proximity to Africa, its long coastline and its language, which it shares with Colombia and most other South American countries. Spanish officials say they seized almost 100 metric tons of cocaine in 2005 and 2006. According to United Nations statistics, Spain seized more cocaine than any European nation between 1999 and 2005.
Authorities suspect that Europe’s thriving cocaine business likely provided the euros in the duffel bag of Mauricio Mazza–Alaluf, the man arrested at LAX in March. Along with a cousin, Luis Mazza–Olmos, he ran an exchange house in downtown Santiago, Chile, according to U.S. and Chilean law–enforcement officials.
The probe into the Mazzas began in August 2004, says Christian Caamano, an investigator for the Investigative Police of Chile. The tip–off was a Peruvian passenger on a flight from Colombia who arrived at the Santiago airport carrying a backpack stuffed with 600,000 euros, according to Mr. Caamano. Alarmed, Chilean authorities began monitoring such couriers and noticed that they dropped off their bags full of euros at the Mazzas’ exchange house.
Later, the Mazzas’ routine evolved: A courier from Colombia, allegedly carrying European proceeds, would deliver cash at the Santiago airport to an armored–car service. Personnel would count the money in a parked truck and turn it over to the Mazzas or one of their associates, says Hernan Penafiel, the lead prosecutor in a parallel case brought in Chile against the Mazzas. One of the Mazzas or their associates would then board a U.S.–bound flight with the money, Mr. Penafiel says.
Once on U.S. soil, according to authorities, the Mazzas allegedly moved their euros with breathtaking openness. Their main tactic was to dutifully fill out paperwork at customs points and financial institutions, using real family and business names, according to law enforcement officials and court documents from the U.S. case.
After the Mazzas or their associates cleared customs at Los Angeles International Airport, they would transfer their cash to Associated Foreign Exchange Banknotes Inc., a currency–exchange firm headquartered in Encino, Calif. AFEX Banknotes then converted the euros into dollars and wired the dollars to U.S. bank accounts the Mazzas had opened, according to law–enforcement officials and two AFEX Banknotes employees.
The Mazzas had accounts with at least three banks in the U.S., according to the court documents from the New York case: Israel Discount Bank of New York; Harris Bank in Chicago; and J.P. Morgan Chase in Dearborn, Mich. In opening each account, the Mazzas gave their company’s real name and openly described it as a tourism and currency–exchange agency.
The Mazzas proceeded to move huge sums of money through these accounts, according to the court documents, often after receiving faxed instructions, intercepted by Chilean authorities, from people or entities with suspected ties to Colombian traffickers.
In a single year, according to court documents, the Mazzas wired $133 million into the Harris Bank account and $117 million out. At their J.P. Morgan Chase account, they wired $35.5 million in and $34 million out in less than three months, and their IDB checking account recorded more than 2,500 transactions totaling more than $29 million during 2003 and 2005, according to the court documents.
Asked to comment, Harris Bank said in a written statement that it ’’identified suspicious activity’’ after conducting its own investigation and ’’closed the account in accordance with banking regulations.’’ IDB said in a statement that the events outlined in the New York case ’’occurred under former management’’ and it no longer maintains accounts for unlicensed money transmitters, including the Mazzas’ casa de cambio. Chase declined to comment.
AFEX Banknotes compliance officer Andrew Scherer says his company is ’’mortified’’ that it may have helped facilitate illegal activity, but added that it has strong anti–money–laundering policies and has taken ’’substantive measures’’ to improve its anti–money–laundering policies in the wake of the Mazza case. He declined to be more specific, citing security concerns.
When Mr. Mazza–Alaluf landed at LAX on March 31, he didn’t attempt to conceal his money. Like he and his associates had done hundreds of times before, he filled out the standard declaration forms, a requirement for passengers entering the U.S. carrying more than $10,000 worth of currency. But this time, he was immediately arrested. The 55–year–old Chilean maintained his innocence.
Mr. Mazza–Alaluf has pleaded not guilty to federal felony charges of conspiracy and operating an unlicensed money–transmitting business. His attorney, Bernard Alan Seidler, calls the charges ’’a classic case of the government overreaching.’’
Chilean authorities nabbed members of the Mazza clan and their associates in a coordinated operation. They are now in jail in Santiago, facing money–laundering charges. Their lawyer, Yieninson Yapur, says they are all innocent. In an email sent via Mr. Yapur, Mr. Mazza–Olmos said he is a legitimate businessman and has done nothing illegal.
The U.S. investigation of the Mazza case was conducted by a multi–agency task force based in New York and led by the DEA and the Internal Revenue Service. Officials tout it as an important success. But it’s unlikely to significantly restrict the flow of narco–euros gushing out of Europe.
On a recent afternoon, far from the glitz of the night life on Gran Via, a homeless addict walked around in a northern Madrid shantytown with a syringe hanging out of his forearm.
Even as police tore down the surrounding shacks to make way for a new development, residents hammered away, rebuilding their wood and cardboard houses. ’’The demand for cocaine is huge, so knocking these shacks down does nothing,’’ says Gema Bautista, a social worker with Fundacion Atenea Grupo GID, which runs a mobile clinic and needle–exchange program. ’’The shacks just pop up again.’’
http://www.caycompass.com/cgi-bin/CFPnews.cgi?ID=1027901
With the euro approaching $1.50 and soaring demand for cocaine in countries like Spain and Italy, Europe has become a far more lucrative place to do business for Latin American drug cartels than in previous years.
To obscure the origins of the funds, and escape government scrutiny in the process, the cartels use a complex system to launder their proceeds – much of which is landing on U.S. shores.
In late March, U.S. authorities arrested a man carrying a leather duffel bag who had just landed at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Santiago, Chile. Inside the bag was more than $1.9 million in cash, mostly in bundles of 500 euro and 200 euro notes.
U.S. and Chilean law enforcement officials believe the man was at the end of a money–laundering trail that begins in Europe. Over a period of four and a half years, he and his associates flew to the U.S. from Latin America some 280 times, openly toting more than $244 million worth of euros into the country, according to documents in a case brought by federal authorities in U.S. District Court in New York.
The big bills have become so symbolic of the lush life that they have recently crept into pop culture: The rapper Jay–Z’s video for Blue Magic – the debut single from his new album ’’American Gangster’’ – features a suitcase full of 500 euro notes and someone thumbing through a stack of them as Jay–Z raps the words, ’’the kilo business.’’ Hype Williams, director of the music video, said that he and Jay–Z chose euros because they are ’’more valuable’’ and because they wanted to ’’one–up’’ their hip–hop competitors by showing ’’the things people are into now.’’
The wads of euros carried by people like the man arrested at LAX are often the spoils of Europe–bound cocaine shipments – many of which transit through Africa, law–enforcement officials say.
Consumption of the drug has soared in much of Western Europe, according to a report released last year by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. In Italy, use of the drug rose to 2.1 percent of the general population in 2005 from 1.1 percent just four years earlier. In France, it tripled from 2000 to 2005, from 0.2 percent to 0.6 percent of the adult population. Cocaine use in England doubled from 1998 to 2006, according to Britain’s National Health Service, to 2.4 percent among adults.
Some narco–euros are laundered directly in Europe. But officials say the lion’s share is routed back to South America as cash and eventually ends up in the U.S.
’’This is still a cash business,’’ says Donald Semesky, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s head of financial–crimes investigations.
The first step is to convert small bills accumulated from thousands of street sales into 500 euro notes, which are easy to transport. Obtaining large quantities of these conspicuous notes, though, isn’t easy. So drug traffickers turn to specialized criminal rings – whose members are often involved in banking and real estate – to gain access to them, says Jose Manuel Alvarez Luna, chief of the money–laundering section of the Spanish police.
Spain is the center for such aggregation, according to authorities. A high–level Spanish banking official says a disproportionate share of the euro zone’s 500 euro notes, known as Bin Ladens for their scarcity, circulate in Spain.
The purpose of money–laundering is to disguise the criminal origins of ill–gotten gains so the funds appear legitimate. In most cases, laundering also helps criminals escape the notice of tax collectors and law–enforcement officials, boosting the value of their illegal proceeds.
Particularly since 9/11, tightened antilaundering regulations, known by banks as ’’know your customer’’ rules, have forced drug cartels to use more circuitous routes to circulate their funds around the globe.
For starters, the drug cartels do not themselves bring their narco–euros to the U.S. Instead, they usually sell their euros to South American black–market currency brokers or to foreign–exchange houses, known in Spanish as casas de cambio. The casas’ business as currency–exchange houses gives them a natural cover for moving large amounts of cash.
But in South America, there are few if any legitimate buyers for the huge sums of euros that the casas obtain – directly or indirectly – from the traffickers. So the casas funnel most of the narco–euros, sometimes via middlemen, through a chain of exchange houses in countries like Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Chile, says the DEA’s Mr. Semesky.
Often, the drug traffickers will sell their euros for Colombian pesos, and then the euros entering the U.S. no longer belong to the drug cartels but to the casa de cambio. In other cases, says Mr. Semesky, traffickers pay the casas to move funds into one of their U.S. bank accounts. These funds aren’t usually intended for withdrawal, but rather to pay various debts. This is achieved by wiring funds to the account of whomever the trafficker wishes to pay.
On a recent night at a bar on Madrid’s bustling Gran Via, a shirtless, tattooed waiter served tables and a buxom drag queen in a nurse’s uniform worked the crowd. In the trendy venue was a man in his 30s who talked by cellphone with his dealers. A few minutes later, he stepped outside, leaned into the window of a small car and handed over 60 euros, or about $90. For that sum, he received one gram of cocaine.
Such street sales have surged. Spain now has a larger percentage of its population (3 percent) using cocaine than the U.S. (2.3 percent), the previous top per–capita consumer, according to United Nations figures. In the first half of 2007, a kilo of cocaine sold for 33,000 euros, or about $43,900, in Madrid, more than triple the $12,500–$14,600 it fetched in Los Angeles and far more than the $13,000–$26,000 it sold for in New York, according to the Spanish police and the DEA.
Last year, seven European countries banded together to form the Maritime Analysis and Operations Center–Narcotics, or MAOC–N, an international agency dedicated to stopping drug traffic over the Atlantic. Already, the center is helping to make major busts.
In October, on the high seas off West Africa, Spanish authorities – acting on a tip from MAOC–N – seized an aging, cockroach–infested trawler. Called the Opnor, it allegedly had more than three metric tons of cocaine hidden below the floor of its cargo hold. Apparently registered in Panama, the vessel was captained by a grizzled Dutch man in his late 60s and is believed to have been heading toward Senegal.
The boat was following a typical pattern, authorities say. They surmise that, if it hadn’t been seized, its cocaine would have been warehoused in West Africa, where crushing poverty, weak law enforcement and, often, rampant corruption make for an ideal way station. The traffickers would have then sent the drugs to Europe by boat, either directly or via North Africa. Increasingly, say Spanish and American authorities, cocaine is also being flown from North Africa in small planes landing in Spain and Portugal on clandestine airstrips.
The traffickers were forced to take those routes because Spanish, Portuguese and British authorities were intercepting boats coming to Europe directly from South America.
Spain is a favorite entry point because of its proximity to Africa, its long coastline and its language, which it shares with Colombia and most other South American countries. Spanish officials say they seized almost 100 metric tons of cocaine in 2005 and 2006. According to United Nations statistics, Spain seized more cocaine than any European nation between 1999 and 2005.
Authorities suspect that Europe’s thriving cocaine business likely provided the euros in the duffel bag of Mauricio Mazza–Alaluf, the man arrested at LAX in March. Along with a cousin, Luis Mazza–Olmos, he ran an exchange house in downtown Santiago, Chile, according to U.S. and Chilean law–enforcement officials.
The probe into the Mazzas began in August 2004, says Christian Caamano, an investigator for the Investigative Police of Chile. The tip–off was a Peruvian passenger on a flight from Colombia who arrived at the Santiago airport carrying a backpack stuffed with 600,000 euros, according to Mr. Caamano. Alarmed, Chilean authorities began monitoring such couriers and noticed that they dropped off their bags full of euros at the Mazzas’ exchange house.
Later, the Mazzas’ routine evolved: A courier from Colombia, allegedly carrying European proceeds, would deliver cash at the Santiago airport to an armored–car service. Personnel would count the money in a parked truck and turn it over to the Mazzas or one of their associates, says Hernan Penafiel, the lead prosecutor in a parallel case brought in Chile against the Mazzas. One of the Mazzas or their associates would then board a U.S.–bound flight with the money, Mr. Penafiel says.
Once on U.S. soil, according to authorities, the Mazzas allegedly moved their euros with breathtaking openness. Their main tactic was to dutifully fill out paperwork at customs points and financial institutions, using real family and business names, according to law enforcement officials and court documents from the U.S. case.
After the Mazzas or their associates cleared customs at Los Angeles International Airport, they would transfer their cash to Associated Foreign Exchange Banknotes Inc., a currency–exchange firm headquartered in Encino, Calif. AFEX Banknotes then converted the euros into dollars and wired the dollars to U.S. bank accounts the Mazzas had opened, according to law–enforcement officials and two AFEX Banknotes employees.
The Mazzas had accounts with at least three banks in the U.S., according to the court documents from the New York case: Israel Discount Bank of New York; Harris Bank in Chicago; and J.P. Morgan Chase in Dearborn, Mich. In opening each account, the Mazzas gave their company’s real name and openly described it as a tourism and currency–exchange agency.
The Mazzas proceeded to move huge sums of money through these accounts, according to the court documents, often after receiving faxed instructions, intercepted by Chilean authorities, from people or entities with suspected ties to Colombian traffickers.
In a single year, according to court documents, the Mazzas wired $133 million into the Harris Bank account and $117 million out. At their J.P. Morgan Chase account, they wired $35.5 million in and $34 million out in less than three months, and their IDB checking account recorded more than 2,500 transactions totaling more than $29 million during 2003 and 2005, according to the court documents.
Asked to comment, Harris Bank said in a written statement that it ’’identified suspicious activity’’ after conducting its own investigation and ’’closed the account in accordance with banking regulations.’’ IDB said in a statement that the events outlined in the New York case ’’occurred under former management’’ and it no longer maintains accounts for unlicensed money transmitters, including the Mazzas’ casa de cambio. Chase declined to comment.
AFEX Banknotes compliance officer Andrew Scherer says his company is ’’mortified’’ that it may have helped facilitate illegal activity, but added that it has strong anti–money–laundering policies and has taken ’’substantive measures’’ to improve its anti–money–laundering policies in the wake of the Mazza case. He declined to be more specific, citing security concerns.
When Mr. Mazza–Alaluf landed at LAX on March 31, he didn’t attempt to conceal his money. Like he and his associates had done hundreds of times before, he filled out the standard declaration forms, a requirement for passengers entering the U.S. carrying more than $10,000 worth of currency. But this time, he was immediately arrested. The 55–year–old Chilean maintained his innocence.
Mr. Mazza–Alaluf has pleaded not guilty to federal felony charges of conspiracy and operating an unlicensed money–transmitting business. His attorney, Bernard Alan Seidler, calls the charges ’’a classic case of the government overreaching.’’
Chilean authorities nabbed members of the Mazza clan and their associates in a coordinated operation. They are now in jail in Santiago, facing money–laundering charges. Their lawyer, Yieninson Yapur, says they are all innocent. In an email sent via Mr. Yapur, Mr. Mazza–Olmos said he is a legitimate businessman and has done nothing illegal.
The U.S. investigation of the Mazza case was conducted by a multi–agency task force based in New York and led by the DEA and the Internal Revenue Service. Officials tout it as an important success. But it’s unlikely to significantly restrict the flow of narco–euros gushing out of Europe.
On a recent afternoon, far from the glitz of the night life on Gran Via, a homeless addict walked around in a northern Madrid shantytown with a syringe hanging out of his forearm.
Even as police tore down the surrounding shacks to make way for a new development, residents hammered away, rebuilding their wood and cardboard houses. ’’The demand for cocaine is huge, so knocking these shacks down does nothing,’’ says Gema Bautista, a social worker with Fundacion Atenea Grupo GID, which runs a mobile clinic and needle–exchange program. ’’The shacks just pop up again.’’
http://www.caycompass.com/cgi-bin/CFPnews.cgi?ID=1027901
on Friday, May 11, 2012
The Swiss government is investigating money laundering charges against British defence company BAE Systems.
Switzerland’s public ministry of the confederation has opened three criminal investigations as a result of alerts by Switzerland's Money Laundering Reporting Office.
BAE Systems has also been investigated by Britain's Serious Fraud Office for its operations in the Czech Republic, Romania, Chile, Qatar, South Africa and Tanzania.
In 2006, the British office dropped a probe into the company that could have implicated Saudi officials over bribes allegedly taken over an arms contract of 53.5 billion euros.
Source: Beijing News
Switzerland’s public ministry of the confederation has opened three criminal investigations as a result of alerts by Switzerland's Money Laundering Reporting Office.
BAE Systems has also been investigated by Britain's Serious Fraud Office for its operations in the Czech Republic, Romania, Chile, Qatar, South Africa and Tanzania.
In 2006, the British office dropped a probe into the company that could have implicated Saudi officials over bribes allegedly taken over an arms contract of 53.5 billion euros.
Source: Beijing News
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on Sunday, April 22, 2012
A former top minister in the Chinese gambling resort of Macau already jailed for taking tens of millions of US dollars in bribes was Wednesday sentenced to a further 28-and-a-half years. Ao Man Long, 52, former secretary for transport and public works, is already serving a 27-year jail term after being convicted last year of taking huge bribes in return for awarding public work contracts.
At the end of a second trial Wednesday, he was convicted of 23 additional counts or bribe-taking and five of money laundering in the biggest corruption case in modern Macau history.
Sentencing him in Macau's Court of Final Appeal, judge Shum Ho-fai said Ao had abused his power as a government official and that his behaviour had seriously damaged the image of the territory.
The two sentences will be served concurrently because of limitations in the Macau Penal Code which mean Ao cannot serve more than 30 years in prison.
Ao was arrested in 2006 and sentenced to 27 years in January 2008 after being found guilty of taking huge bribes as he awarded public works contracts for a series of massive casino projects.
He built up a personal fortune of 100 million US dollars as the former Portuguese colony, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1999, welcomed a series of Las Vegas-owned casinos.
Ao was found guilty of 57 out of 76 charges including corruption, money-laundering, abuse of power and making false statements at the end of his original trial.
A graduate of Taiwan University, Ao joined the Macau government in 1987 and was appointed its first secretary for transport and public works after the territory reverted to Chinese rule.
Source: DPA- EARTH TIMES
At the end of a second trial Wednesday, he was convicted of 23 additional counts or bribe-taking and five of money laundering in the biggest corruption case in modern Macau history.
Sentencing him in Macau's Court of Final Appeal, judge Shum Ho-fai said Ao had abused his power as a government official and that his behaviour had seriously damaged the image of the territory.
The two sentences will be served concurrently because of limitations in the Macau Penal Code which mean Ao cannot serve more than 30 years in prison.
Ao was arrested in 2006 and sentenced to 27 years in January 2008 after being found guilty of taking huge bribes as he awarded public works contracts for a series of massive casino projects.
He built up a personal fortune of 100 million US dollars as the former Portuguese colony, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1999, welcomed a series of Las Vegas-owned casinos.
Ao was found guilty of 57 out of 76 charges including corruption, money-laundering, abuse of power and making false statements at the end of his original trial.
A graduate of Taiwan University, Ao joined the Macau government in 1987 and was appointed its first secretary for transport and public works after the territory reverted to Chinese rule.
Source: DPA- EARTH TIMES
on Monday, April 2, 2012
by David Leigh
Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly questioned over €13m payment from British arms company
An Austrian count and lobbyist for the British arms company BAE has been arrested, making him the first of the company's global network of confidential agents to be held in custody in five years of bribery investigations by international authorities.
Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly is being detained in Austria after being arrested on Friday, a spokesman for the Vienna regional court for criminal matters, Christian Gneist, said. He faces a court hearing on 16 March.
Under Austrian law, pre-trial custody can last up to six months if an investigating judge deems it necessary.
Mensdorff-Pouilly owns a castle in Scotland and is married to the former Austrian health minister Maria Rauch-Kallat. He was arrested at his house in Luising, Austria, according to his lawyer, Harald Schuster, who claimed the accusations, which include money laundering, were groundless.
BAE, Europe's biggest arms manufacturer, declined to comment on the arrest.
The Austrian investigation, which follows one by British authorities, relates to lease agreements from 2003 and 2004. Hungary renewed a lease for 14 Gripen planes and the Czech government agreed to lease 14 planes over 10 years. BAE marketed the planes, which are produced by the Swedish company Saab, in which BAE has a 21% stake.
Mensdorff-Pouilly is being questioned in connection with a €13m (£11.6m) payment allegedly made to him by BAE, for whom he had been a consultant for 16 years. Documents which have emerged in the case link BAE to secret payments made to an intermediary company called Valurex, in Switzerland.
Following exposure by the Guardian of the original bribery allegations against BAE, a report last year by the retired British judge Lord Woolf said the arms giant had paid "insufficient attention" to ethical standards when doing arms deals. After strenuous lobbying by BAE, a British investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into bribery allegations in Saudi Arabia was halted by the then prime minister, Tony Blair, on the grounds it would compromise national security.
But the SFO continued to work with international prosecutors on allegations against BAE in eastern Europe, Tanzania, Chile and South Africa. They obtained production orders from BAE and its bankers, Lloyds TSB, which unearthed links with Mensdorff-Pouilly's companies.
Last year, the count was stopped for questioning by the SFO on the way home from Dalnaglar Castle in Perthshire, a property he bought after the conclusion of the Czech deals.
The US justice department has been negotiating with BAE about the possibility of a settlement in a parallel investigation into possible breaches of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Source: The Guardian
Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly questioned over €13m payment from British arms company
An Austrian count and lobbyist for the British arms company BAE has been arrested, making him the first of the company's global network of confidential agents to be held in custody in five years of bribery investigations by international authorities.
Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly is being detained in Austria after being arrested on Friday, a spokesman for the Vienna regional court for criminal matters, Christian Gneist, said. He faces a court hearing on 16 March.
Under Austrian law, pre-trial custody can last up to six months if an investigating judge deems it necessary.
Mensdorff-Pouilly owns a castle in Scotland and is married to the former Austrian health minister Maria Rauch-Kallat. He was arrested at his house in Luising, Austria, according to his lawyer, Harald Schuster, who claimed the accusations, which include money laundering, were groundless.
BAE, Europe's biggest arms manufacturer, declined to comment on the arrest.
The Austrian investigation, which follows one by British authorities, relates to lease agreements from 2003 and 2004. Hungary renewed a lease for 14 Gripen planes and the Czech government agreed to lease 14 planes over 10 years. BAE marketed the planes, which are produced by the Swedish company Saab, in which BAE has a 21% stake.
Mensdorff-Pouilly is being questioned in connection with a €13m (£11.6m) payment allegedly made to him by BAE, for whom he had been a consultant for 16 years. Documents which have emerged in the case link BAE to secret payments made to an intermediary company called Valurex, in Switzerland.
Following exposure by the Guardian of the original bribery allegations against BAE, a report last year by the retired British judge Lord Woolf said the arms giant had paid "insufficient attention" to ethical standards when doing arms deals. After strenuous lobbying by BAE, a British investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into bribery allegations in Saudi Arabia was halted by the then prime minister, Tony Blair, on the grounds it would compromise national security.
But the SFO continued to work with international prosecutors on allegations against BAE in eastern Europe, Tanzania, Chile and South Africa. They obtained production orders from BAE and its bankers, Lloyds TSB, which unearthed links with Mensdorff-Pouilly's companies.
Last year, the count was stopped for questioning by the SFO on the way home from Dalnaglar Castle in Perthshire, a property he bought after the conclusion of the Czech deals.
The US justice department has been negotiating with BAE about the possibility of a settlement in a parallel investigation into possible breaches of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Source: The Guardian
on Sunday, January 28, 2007
Says South American Financial Watchdog Organization Gafisud (January 28, 2007) The South America Financial Action Group (Gafisud), an international intergovernmental organization designed to fight white-collar crime, reported last week that Chile is falling short of international standards in the fight against money laundering.
The Finance Ministry revealed some of the Gafisud’s conclusions at the end of 2006, but it was not yet known how Chile had “scored” in the final report, which defined 49 categories that should be fulfilled in order to fully combat the problem.
The final report, released in Buenos Aires last week, showed that seven Gafisud categories were not being properly met in Chile. For example, the law in Chile does not require supervision or risk assessment of non-financial activity. Moreover, non-profit organisations are not obliged to regulate their financial activity.
The report also found that “there is no mechanism to prevent the illicit use of the judicial system to commit illegal activities.”
Chile was also criticized for its failure to provide statistics about money laundering in the country. Currently, data regarding documented cases of money laundering in Chile is inconsistently presented and not widely available, according to Gafisud.
Several of Gafisud’s requirements focused on money laundering as a way to fund terrorism. Chile was criticised for not responding to UN resolutions on this issue, and also for its lack of mechanisms to prevent non-profit organisations from being used as a front to fund terrorism.
Mauricio Fernández of the Money Laundering Unit at the Public Prosecutor’s Office said the government needs to clarify laws regarding money laundering, so that it is easier for the police to make arrests.
Property confiscated as a result of money laundering in Chile in 2004 exceeded US$8 million, according to an international report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (ST, April 1, 2004).
SOURCE: EL MERCURIO
By Cate Setterfield (editor@santiagotimes.cl)
http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=12859&topic_id=15
The Finance Ministry revealed some of the Gafisud’s conclusions at the end of 2006, but it was not yet known how Chile had “scored” in the final report, which defined 49 categories that should be fulfilled in order to fully combat the problem.
The final report, released in Buenos Aires last week, showed that seven Gafisud categories were not being properly met in Chile. For example, the law in Chile does not require supervision or risk assessment of non-financial activity. Moreover, non-profit organisations are not obliged to regulate their financial activity.
The report also found that “there is no mechanism to prevent the illicit use of the judicial system to commit illegal activities.”
Chile was also criticized for its failure to provide statistics about money laundering in the country. Currently, data regarding documented cases of money laundering in Chile is inconsistently presented and not widely available, according to Gafisud.
Several of Gafisud’s requirements focused on money laundering as a way to fund terrorism. Chile was criticised for not responding to UN resolutions on this issue, and also for its lack of mechanisms to prevent non-profit organisations from being used as a front to fund terrorism.
Mauricio Fernández of the Money Laundering Unit at the Public Prosecutor’s Office said the government needs to clarify laws regarding money laundering, so that it is easier for the police to make arrests.
Property confiscated as a result of money laundering in Chile in 2004 exceeded US$8 million, according to an international report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (ST, April 1, 2004).
SOURCE: EL MERCURIO
By Cate Setterfield (editor@santiagotimes.cl)
http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=12859&topic_id=15
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