Financial Crime Online

Fox business reports that U.S. Gangs Turn to White-Collar Crime: The evolving criminal schemes, which include mortgage fraud, counterfeiting, bank and credit card fraud and identity theft, are attractive because they are much less risky than traditional gang-related crimes such as murder, drug trafficking and robbery, and have the potential to yield much greater profits, [...]

UBS stock took a 7% hit today after the news was published that a rogue trader had been arrested. A 31 year old London based UBS broker allegedly surprised his employer with a $2 billion loss due to unauthorized trading. Who doubted that banks took risk management extremely serious after the mortgage crisis and Kerviel [...]

Remember the 9-11 Commission: According to Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, “Right now we have been spending a lot of energy in the government trying to dry up sources of funding. When it only costs $400,000 to $500,000 to pull off an operation like 9/11, we’ll never dry up money. But by using the money trail, [...]

“Moammar Gadhafi is a fugitive whose country of nationality and the International Criminal Court want arrested and held accountable for the serious criminal charges that have been brought against him,” said Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble. No sign of the man himself. His wealth seems to have been spread around the world. Both the EU [...]

Thomson Reuters, based on an undisclosed source, reported that the US Justice department in looking into possibilities to prosecute HSBC bankers individually in the money laundering probe against HSBC. I understand they are meticulously doing interviews with one primary objective driven by the Justice Department on this case, which is to identify and prosecute any [...]

An end to one of the most spectacular Swiss banking criminal cases. Zurich based banker Holenweger was acquitted of money laundering charges. Eight years after Holenweger was first arrested on charges of laundering money for South American drug cartels, the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona on Thursday cleared him of all charges, which also included [...]

Switzerland adopted the ‘ Return of Illegal Assets Act’  a couple of years ago, allegedly in an attempt to shake off it somewhat shady image as financial safe haven for dictators. Mubarak is the next batter up. Yesterday his 30 year reign ended. That same day, his funds in Switzerland were frozen based on the [...]

Given the estimates that half of the proceeds of drug deals by Mexican cartels in the US is smuggled back to Mexico and laundered there, we can (gu)es(s)timate that total turnover is around $ 20 bn a year. It also implies that that the rest, another $ 10 bn annually, remains in the US – [...]

A very strange press conference is planned today. Swiss (ex) Julius Baer banker and ‘ whistleblower’  Rudolf Elmer is planning to handover to WikiLeaks two CDs containing data of around 2,000 bank clients who may have been evading taxes.  “The documents show that they are hiding behind bank secrecy, possibly to avoid taxes,” Elmer, a [...]

According to the Guardian, ‘ Operation Eaglewood’  led to Scotland Yard’s largest-ever simultaneous raid in February 2008. The investigation focused on money laundering and cocaine distribution. A taxi cab business was in the middle of the laundering scheme; is was used as a front store. 33 gang members were sentenced. From the information that surfaced, [...]