Financial Crime Online

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 [...]

Laundering leaders and their families…. The son in law of Kazakh leader Nazabayev, Timor Kulibayev, is subject of a Swiss money laundering probe according to multiple sources. He allegedly used Swiss bank accounts to launder money. One of the transactions under investigations is probably related to a real estate deal. He bought the Duke of [...]

Now just when you thought it perhaps isn’t as bad as it seems…. Austrian magazin Profil reported that Muammar Kaddafi (or al-Gaddafi; indeed the infamous Libian leader) gave Haider, the late right wing Austrian politician, hundreds of thousands of dollars in tote bags. Profil, based on several sources, claims that the cash was susequently bundled [...]

An interesting spin-off during an investigation by Austrian and German authorities into the near-collapse of Austrian bank  Hypo Group Alpe Adria. The bank was once owned by the Austrian region of Carinthia, which Austrian right wing politician Haider governed until he died in a car crash in 2008. The investigators revealed that Haider had access to [...]

Last Thursday UNODC launched the report “The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment“. It shows how organized crime has globalized and turned into one of the world’s foremost economic and armed powers. “..Among the findings in the new report, which features a number of high-impact maps and charts that illustrate illicit flows [...]

Now hear this. On 10 April 2010 a Tupolev aircraft of the Polish Air Force crashed near the city of Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 people on board. These included the Polish president Lech Kaczyński and his wife, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the [...]

A new U.S.-Mexico government study estimates that $19 billion to $29 billion is shipped south, then laundered through cash purchases of land, luxury hotels, cars and other high-end items. Remember the recent arrest of Cancun mayor for aiding criminal groups setting up shop in Cancun? The amount of money involved shows the (financial) power of [...]

Reuters reports that the mayor of the Mexican beach resort of Cancun has been arrested and charged with money laundering and drug-related crimes, making him one of the highest-ranking public officials swept up in Mexico’s crackdown on narcotics traffickers. “He was moving so much money and it just didn’t match up with the amount he [...]

Swiss banks are no longer what they used to be. The ‘secrecy veil’ has been lifted to a large extent. Money launderers found ‘safer’ havens for their dirty money. This week it was announced that a Swiss banker, the former CEO of Tempus PrivatBank, is indicted for corruption and money laundering after a 7 (!) [...]

The Quadrangle Group agreed to pay $ 12 million to settle allegations of paying kickbacks to get business from a NY pension fund. The investment firm will pay $ 7 million to the pension fund and $ 5 million to the SEC. News of the settlement came on the same day that the state comptroller, [...]