Financial Crime Online

A sensitive subject; lawyers involved in money laudering. Why sensitive ? Lawyers have a respectable profession and some priviliges. One of the most important is is attorney-client privilige. Lawyers have uncontrolled access to suspects in custody, conversations with clients can not be intercepted by law enforcement, and in some jurisdictions even the bank accounts of lawyers are secret. This ability to keep things secret for governments is attractive to criminals. So there can be no dispute on the fact that there is a criminal demand to use (and abuse) these priviliges. What about the supply ? Enough criminal cases show that some lawyers do facilitate money laundering and even crimes by using their priviliges in a way that take them ‘across the line’. In a lot of countries there is a debate on these priviliges. Usually the lawyers want to restrict all possibilities for law enforcement to have a peek intro their communication and bank accounts. Law enforcement respects the special status of lawyers in the criminal justice process but want to keep the options open to investigate lawyers in case of suspicion of serious crimes, just as all of us ‘normal’ citizens.

To fuel the debate some recent examples of lawyers crossing the line, either to make some extra money, or they were threatened or blackmailed to cooperate, or just could not say ‘no’ ?

A lawyer who fervently contested the result of the 2000 presidential election and started an organization advocating voter reform used it to hide profits from another venture, the police say: a strip club that offered more than dancing. The lawyer, Louis Posner, ran the Hot Lap Dance Club out of a fifth-floor loft in Hell’s Kitchen, where the police said the wealthy clientele paid as much as $5,000 for sex with dancers in private rooms. The authorities raided the loft on Thursday night and arrested Mr. Posner, his wife, Betty, and 19 others on charges that included money laundering and promoting prostitution. No clients were arrested. According to the police, Mr. Posner, a 52-year-old tax lawyer, funneled the club’s money to an account for Voter March, the grass-roots demonstration organization he started shortly after the 2000 election that has been largely inactive since 2004. He deposited money into several other accounts, the police said, adding that the amounts were low enough to avoid raising a red flag at the Internal Revenue Service.