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Hello everyone!
How do criminals launder money? When did this term appear? What is the purpose of money laundering? How do they fight it in Russia and the USA?
We will talk about all this in today's topic!
What do you know about money laundering? Write in the comments!
Contents:
How did “money laundering” come about?
The money laundering industry. Past and present. We all know this term, money laundering, from such TV series as “Breaking Bad,” the movie “Casino,” and so on. Of course, all of this was used in the mafia, and this term, as some believe, is more than 90 years old. But it’s not that simple. Some, so to speak, historians associate this term with Alcapone.
During the prohibition, it was Alcapone who came up with the idea of using laundries, where everyone paid in cash, to legalize the money that was obtained through the sale of illegal alcohol. They simply mixed illegally obtained cash with the cash that people handed in when they washed something in laundries in America. It was impossible to track what the proceeds were and what money was coming in.
And if these were also new bills, then they were literally aged. Washed in these same washing machines. But Al Capone was arrested and brought to trial in 1931. And it was in the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago. And the first laundries in America appeared only in 1934, in Texas. But, nevertheless, Al Capone is involved in this term. The fact is that Al Capone had a right hand, a mafia accountant, Meyer Lansky.
And it was he who came up with the idea of using laundries while Alcapone was serving his sentence in Alcatraz. Ameir Lansky is an abbreviation. Meyer was born in Grodno, Russian Empire, and migrated to America in 1911. Lansky is an abbreviation for the surname Sukhomlyansky. Russians were also involved here. Then Lansky improved his scheme and began to use gambling establishments.
Casinos added illegal profits to their net revenues. In this way, casinos declared large profits, from which they paid taxes, and thus brought their income out of the shadows. Taxes were paid, no one had any questions. This scheme reached its peak in the 1960s, when casinos in Cuba were widely used, since US legislation did not work there at all and no one was watching anything.
And, accordingly, players, including those from the United States, carried suitcases of money to casinos in Cuba. But in 1959, Fidel Castro closed this shop with the help of the revolution. And then Lansky began to actively invest in the Las Vegas that was under construction. And he also helped organize the first offshore zones in the Bahamas and the Caribbean, physically building certain casinos.
But this is the scale of this scheme. It must be said that Lansky lived very modestly, did not attract unnecessary attention to himself, and died on his ranch at the age of 81.
Why do people launder money?
Now that we have sorted out the history of the term, let's figure out why it is necessary at all. After all, money laundering itself is the transfer of money obtained by criminal means to a legal status. In other words, it is the transfer of black cash and electronic currency from the shadow zone to the legal one in order to be able to use the funds openly and publicly.
There are 3 reasons:
1 and the most popular reason for money laundering is security. If you keep cash in a bank, or even better in several, it will be much more difficult to steal. Everything is much worse if it is all complicated in some guarded mansion, which can, albeit difficult, be robbed.
The 2nd reason is personal security. It is much easier to make transfers by going directly to the bank, as it was before, or online banking, as it is now, than to carry suitcases of cash with you. In addition, if your expenses exceed your income, it is easy to get caught by the tax authorities, which is what happened to several of our million-plus bloggers. The tax authorities calculated and justified that their expenses were much higher than their declared income, Blinovskaya, Lerchik and Izha with them.
And about how not to make mistakes and not pay such a high price for this, like Blinovskaya.
Well, and the 3rd reason is the mobility and speed of money transfer. Previously, from point A to point B, now one click in an online bank. And once again, by legalizing funds, you can use them absolutely legally and calmly, as some people believe.
That is, if in a certain country there is no legislation obliging you to tell where the money came from, then this is generally a paradise for those people who are engaged in money laundering.
How do they fight “money laundering” in Russia?
And what about Russia? They wanted to legislatively limit the turnover of cash in payments between individuals back in 2014.
A corresponding bill was issued. The amount there was 600 thousand rubles. After certain events, this amount was lowered to 300 thousand rubles. And after the second certain events, this law was shelved altogether. It is not the time yet. But, nevertheless, today Rosfinmonitoring closely monitors all transactions between individuals exceeding 100 thousand rubles. Keep this in mind.
But, nevertheless, steps are still being taken in this direction. Federal Law No. 115 "On Combating the Legalization of Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism". It is stated that banks must notify the tax authorities of all transfers over 600 thousand rubles. These transactions also include certain cash transactions carried out through banks, such as depositing cash into a legal entity's account or deposit, as well as purchasing currency.
Yes, banks are not required to report these transactions to the central bank, but they are required to check the reliability of the origin of the money and the reliability of a specific person. And if they do not like something or if something raises doubts, then immediately transfer this information to both the tax service and Rosfinmonitoring.
And this function is currently assigned to the security service of the banks themselves. Also, in accordance with Federal Law No. 115, banks monitor the frequency of such transactions for specific individuals. And if this is widespread, that is, more than three times, for example, a week, sanctions are imposed, the money in the account is seized and they wait for the account owner to come and give an explanation.
This is how it is now arranged in Russia. Banks are also required to report to the nearest branch of the Federal Tax Service about the opening of all deposits or accounts of individuals, organizations and individual entrepreneurs, but they do not indicate the amounts of funds in these accounts. The tax service can request this information from Rosfinmonitoring. But banks will be required to disclose this information to the tax authorities if a person is accused of tax evasion, as well as if there is a court decision to seize this account.
In the case of purchasing an apartment or a car, the Federal Tax Service also automatically receives information about the property in order to calculate taxes, but the tax authority does not investigate the origin of the source of financing, where the money comes from. If Rosfinmonitoring suddenly doesn’t like something, then it will find out and ask, where does the money come from? Otherwise, everything is fine.
The tax authority is simply notified so that it can calculate the tax base from the citizen’s new property.
How do they fight “money laundering” in the USA?
Well, what about our overseas sworn partners, the United States of America? According to statistics from open data, cash turnover accounts for only 11%, i.e. the remaining 89% are non-cash payments.
But nevertheless. The Ministry of Justice has a working group to track suspicious transactions with cash. Casinos, stock exchanges, mortgage brokers and banks report to the government transactions worth more than 10 thousand dollars, at today's rate just under a million rubles.
Methods of money laundering.
And now we move on to the methods of money laundering. The most popular in the world are 5.
1 method is hawala, where financial transactions occur at a trust level.
Hawala is popular in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In India, such transfers are called hundi. How does it work? A person comes, hands over cash, then he is given a code, including a graphic code or some numbers, often they use the number of the bill from the money he handed over. The person passes this code to his trusted person in another part of the country or in another part of the world.
The trusted person goes to the same receiver, says this code and also receives the same money in cash. That is, the transaction as such does not occur at all, there is no bank here, so it is almost impossible to track. Everything happens at the trust level through a system of offsets, including currencies. At their internal rate, an instant exchange occurs on the day of the request.
Naturally, this will only work for those jurisdictions where the person who receives the money does not have to report on its origin and can do whatever he wants with it. But this, of course, is not Europe. Until a certain time, banking secrecy worked in Switzerland. It was impossible to disclose any accounts with whom, any money there, and especially where this money came from. But the United States of America at the end of the last century destroyed all this very well.
And now no banking secrecy exists not only in Switzerland, but in all of Europe. But there is such an organization as FAD, the International Organization for the Fight against Floating Away Money. In 2013, she released a report on the impact of hawala. Since it is almost impossible to track transactions in this system, it can take up from 10 to 50% of the total mass of monetary transactions in the world.
Of course, this does not mean that all transactions are criminal, in no case, but some of them are definitely there. And in this regard, after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, this system was practically banned in the United States. It is illegal to do so in the United States.
The 2nd way is real estate. According to a 2015 New York Times investigation, more than 70% of real estate in Manhattan, the most expensive piece of land in the United States, does not belong to citizens of the United States.
Almost all other countries are represented there. Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, England, and so on, and so on, and so on. Of course, this makes you think. And how does this happen? Sellers are not interested in the source of funds for which real estate is purchased.
Especially fabulously expensive real estate. Moreover, there are even services for a small share, when they give a front company, which is registered in the USA, so that it buys on behalf of and on behalf of. And how the money got into the company, no one cares, and then the company simply goes bankrupt.
Method 3. The Russian know-how was the Moldovan scheme. Since the term itself was invented by a Russian, the Russians also distinguished themselves here. The Moldovan scheme consisted of two fictitious companies entering into an agreement that they obviously did not intend to fulfill, which prescribed liability in the event of disputes in a specific court, the court must be Moldovan for this, a Moldovan citizen acted as a guarantor, money for the work was transferred, goods were not delivered, the company filed a lawsuit and, taking into account penalties for delays and interest for the use of other people's money, received a writ of execution in the Moldovan court, which significantly exceeded the amount that it transferred to the shell company, and after that everything was calmly written off from the accounts of that very company. Naturally, these were all companies that were interdependent and participated in the same scheme. All this was done specifically in order to legalize funds that were obtained somehow incorrectly, not to steal them from another company, but to legalize them.
After this money was written off from the companies' accounts, it dissolved in the accounts of other legal companies around the world. According to this Moldovan scheme, about 26 billion US dollars were legalized during its entire existence.
Method 4 is art. The thing is that art prices can be anything. Thus, one art dealer declared that he was carrying a painting worth 100 dollars, when he was checked at customs, it turned out that he was carrying a painting worth 8 million dollars, and so on and so forth. There is a very fresh scandal, when the oligarch Rybolovlev filed a lawsuit against his art dealer, accusing him of doubling the cost of the art objects he was buying.
Let's see how it all ends. When buying certain works of art that are put up for sale at auction houses, Sotheby's, Crisby's, no one ever states who the buyer is, and no one ever checks the legality of the origin of the money that was used to buy certain works of art.
This is the law of this market. Naturally, dishonest citizens take advantage of this. Recently, the US has begun to combat money laundering and is forcing people to report all amounts that exceed 10 thousand dollars. Auction houses have gotten around this completely calmly. They split purchases into amounts less than 10 thousand dollars. That is, it turns out that there is not one transaction of 1 million dollars, but about 100 or more transactions, and they are not obliged to report on such a formal and absolutely stupid basis. Democracy, what can you expect from them.
And finally, the 5th method is virtual currencies. Bitcoin, altcoin, ether and everything else. With their help, as some believe, you can cover your tracks, but this is not always the case. For example, in the case of Liberty Reserve, through which more than 30 billion dollars passed. Not long ago, seven founders of this platform were arrested in the USA. Including for laundering money obtained by criminal means.
How do they launder money in Russia?
And what about Russia? Specifically, in Russia, everything is the old-fashioned way. Classic.
TOP-3 money laundering schemes.
1. Receiving proceeds from illegal drug trafficking to electronic wallets.
What are the characteristic signs of this? Incomprehensible comments on transactions, for example, behind the tank, astral, hard, numeric comments similar to the order number, a phrase similar to the address, Lenin 35 around the corner, under the tree, the same and frequent credits to the wallet with subsequent quick withdrawal of money. All this is monitored by Rosfin-monitoring, to this extent, keep this in mind.
2 is an artificial completion of the tax burden. It is known that a low tax burden is the main factor of a dubious client.
Transiters and cashers do not like to pay taxes. To increase tax deductions, payments are made to the budget settlement account - 40-101. But with the indication of the management of the correct details. The funds are returned back to the company account, and formally the amount of payments sent increases. And in such a simple way they try to deceive the system. And this only works for one-day firms that made some small transactions for 2-3 months, then died.
For a serious company, this no longer works.
3 is the use of vulnerabilities in antitrust and anti-money laundering laws. For example, transferring money from the account of a legal entity or individual entrepreneur to the account of an individual. Almost all control systems are configured to identify such transactions on the balance accounts of the recipient individual. However, the sender specifies deliberately incorrect accounts as the recipient's account, and specifies the correct details in the payment purpose.
The automatic control system does not look there. And it turns out that when the bank receives such a payment, it sees that there is an error, but the details are specified correctly, and therefore still executes, and the control is bypassed. But this is all for the time being. Again, if the bank sees this often enough, it will give the information to Rosfemonitoring, and there it will deal with such a recipient and sender more seriously.
In the Russian Federation, all this has already been digitalized, keep this in mind. Do not gamble with the state. To feel safe - do not launder money.
How do criminals launder money? When did this term appear? What is the purpose of money laundering? How do they fight it in Russia and the USA?
We will talk about all this in today's topic!
What do you know about money laundering? Write in the comments!
Contents:
- How did money laundering come about?
- Why do people launder money?
- How do they fight money laundering in Russia?
- How does the US combat money laundering?
- Methods of money laundering
- How do they launder money in Russia?
How did “money laundering” come about?
The money laundering industry. Past and present. We all know this term, money laundering, from such TV series as “Breaking Bad,” the movie “Casino,” and so on. Of course, all of this was used in the mafia, and this term, as some believe, is more than 90 years old. But it’s not that simple. Some, so to speak, historians associate this term with Alcapone.
During the prohibition, it was Alcapone who came up with the idea of using laundries, where everyone paid in cash, to legalize the money that was obtained through the sale of illegal alcohol. They simply mixed illegally obtained cash with the cash that people handed in when they washed something in laundries in America. It was impossible to track what the proceeds were and what money was coming in.
And if these were also new bills, then they were literally aged. Washed in these same washing machines. But Al Capone was arrested and brought to trial in 1931. And it was in the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago. And the first laundries in America appeared only in 1934, in Texas. But, nevertheless, Al Capone is involved in this term. The fact is that Al Capone had a right hand, a mafia accountant, Meyer Lansky.
And it was he who came up with the idea of using laundries while Alcapone was serving his sentence in Alcatraz. Ameir Lansky is an abbreviation. Meyer was born in Grodno, Russian Empire, and migrated to America in 1911. Lansky is an abbreviation for the surname Sukhomlyansky. Russians were also involved here. Then Lansky improved his scheme and began to use gambling establishments.
Casinos added illegal profits to their net revenues. In this way, casinos declared large profits, from which they paid taxes, and thus brought their income out of the shadows. Taxes were paid, no one had any questions. This scheme reached its peak in the 1960s, when casinos in Cuba were widely used, since US legislation did not work there at all and no one was watching anything.
And, accordingly, players, including those from the United States, carried suitcases of money to casinos in Cuba. But in 1959, Fidel Castro closed this shop with the help of the revolution. And then Lansky began to actively invest in the Las Vegas that was under construction. And he also helped organize the first offshore zones in the Bahamas and the Caribbean, physically building certain casinos.
But this is the scale of this scheme. It must be said that Lansky lived very modestly, did not attract unnecessary attention to himself, and died on his ranch at the age of 81.
Why do people launder money?
Now that we have sorted out the history of the term, let's figure out why it is necessary at all. After all, money laundering itself is the transfer of money obtained by criminal means to a legal status. In other words, it is the transfer of black cash and electronic currency from the shadow zone to the legal one in order to be able to use the funds openly and publicly.
There are 3 reasons:
1 and the most popular reason for money laundering is security. If you keep cash in a bank, or even better in several, it will be much more difficult to steal. Everything is much worse if it is all complicated in some guarded mansion, which can, albeit difficult, be robbed.
The 2nd reason is personal security. It is much easier to make transfers by going directly to the bank, as it was before, or online banking, as it is now, than to carry suitcases of cash with you. In addition, if your expenses exceed your income, it is easy to get caught by the tax authorities, which is what happened to several of our million-plus bloggers. The tax authorities calculated and justified that their expenses were much higher than their declared income, Blinovskaya, Lerchik and Izha with them.
And about how not to make mistakes and not pay such a high price for this, like Blinovskaya.
Well, and the 3rd reason is the mobility and speed of money transfer. Previously, from point A to point B, now one click in an online bank. And once again, by legalizing funds, you can use them absolutely legally and calmly, as some people believe.
That is, if in a certain country there is no legislation obliging you to tell where the money came from, then this is generally a paradise for those people who are engaged in money laundering.
How do they fight “money laundering” in Russia?
And what about Russia? They wanted to legislatively limit the turnover of cash in payments between individuals back in 2014.
A corresponding bill was issued. The amount there was 600 thousand rubles. After certain events, this amount was lowered to 300 thousand rubles. And after the second certain events, this law was shelved altogether. It is not the time yet. But, nevertheless, today Rosfinmonitoring closely monitors all transactions between individuals exceeding 100 thousand rubles. Keep this in mind.
But, nevertheless, steps are still being taken in this direction. Federal Law No. 115 "On Combating the Legalization of Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism". It is stated that banks must notify the tax authorities of all transfers over 600 thousand rubles. These transactions also include certain cash transactions carried out through banks, such as depositing cash into a legal entity's account or deposit, as well as purchasing currency.
Yes, banks are not required to report these transactions to the central bank, but they are required to check the reliability of the origin of the money and the reliability of a specific person. And if they do not like something or if something raises doubts, then immediately transfer this information to both the tax service and Rosfinmonitoring.
And this function is currently assigned to the security service of the banks themselves. Also, in accordance with Federal Law No. 115, banks monitor the frequency of such transactions for specific individuals. And if this is widespread, that is, more than three times, for example, a week, sanctions are imposed, the money in the account is seized and they wait for the account owner to come and give an explanation.
This is how it is now arranged in Russia. Banks are also required to report to the nearest branch of the Federal Tax Service about the opening of all deposits or accounts of individuals, organizations and individual entrepreneurs, but they do not indicate the amounts of funds in these accounts. The tax service can request this information from Rosfinmonitoring. But banks will be required to disclose this information to the tax authorities if a person is accused of tax evasion, as well as if there is a court decision to seize this account.
In the case of purchasing an apartment or a car, the Federal Tax Service also automatically receives information about the property in order to calculate taxes, but the tax authority does not investigate the origin of the source of financing, where the money comes from. If Rosfinmonitoring suddenly doesn’t like something, then it will find out and ask, where does the money come from? Otherwise, everything is fine.
The tax authority is simply notified so that it can calculate the tax base from the citizen’s new property.
How do they fight “money laundering” in the USA?
Well, what about our overseas sworn partners, the United States of America? According to statistics from open data, cash turnover accounts for only 11%, i.e. the remaining 89% are non-cash payments.
But nevertheless. The Ministry of Justice has a working group to track suspicious transactions with cash. Casinos, stock exchanges, mortgage brokers and banks report to the government transactions worth more than 10 thousand dollars, at today's rate just under a million rubles.
Methods of money laundering.
And now we move on to the methods of money laundering. The most popular in the world are 5.
1 method is hawala, where financial transactions occur at a trust level.
Hawala is popular in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In India, such transfers are called hundi. How does it work? A person comes, hands over cash, then he is given a code, including a graphic code or some numbers, often they use the number of the bill from the money he handed over. The person passes this code to his trusted person in another part of the country or in another part of the world.
The trusted person goes to the same receiver, says this code and also receives the same money in cash. That is, the transaction as such does not occur at all, there is no bank here, so it is almost impossible to track. Everything happens at the trust level through a system of offsets, including currencies. At their internal rate, an instant exchange occurs on the day of the request.
Naturally, this will only work for those jurisdictions where the person who receives the money does not have to report on its origin and can do whatever he wants with it. But this, of course, is not Europe. Until a certain time, banking secrecy worked in Switzerland. It was impossible to disclose any accounts with whom, any money there, and especially where this money came from. But the United States of America at the end of the last century destroyed all this very well.
And now no banking secrecy exists not only in Switzerland, but in all of Europe. But there is such an organization as FAD, the International Organization for the Fight against Floating Away Money. In 2013, she released a report on the impact of hawala. Since it is almost impossible to track transactions in this system, it can take up from 10 to 50% of the total mass of monetary transactions in the world.
Of course, this does not mean that all transactions are criminal, in no case, but some of them are definitely there. And in this regard, after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, this system was practically banned in the United States. It is illegal to do so in the United States.
The 2nd way is real estate. According to a 2015 New York Times investigation, more than 70% of real estate in Manhattan, the most expensive piece of land in the United States, does not belong to citizens of the United States.
Almost all other countries are represented there. Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, England, and so on, and so on, and so on. Of course, this makes you think. And how does this happen? Sellers are not interested in the source of funds for which real estate is purchased.
Especially fabulously expensive real estate. Moreover, there are even services for a small share, when they give a front company, which is registered in the USA, so that it buys on behalf of and on behalf of. And how the money got into the company, no one cares, and then the company simply goes bankrupt.
Method 3. The Russian know-how was the Moldovan scheme. Since the term itself was invented by a Russian, the Russians also distinguished themselves here. The Moldovan scheme consisted of two fictitious companies entering into an agreement that they obviously did not intend to fulfill, which prescribed liability in the event of disputes in a specific court, the court must be Moldovan for this, a Moldovan citizen acted as a guarantor, money for the work was transferred, goods were not delivered, the company filed a lawsuit and, taking into account penalties for delays and interest for the use of other people's money, received a writ of execution in the Moldovan court, which significantly exceeded the amount that it transferred to the shell company, and after that everything was calmly written off from the accounts of that very company. Naturally, these were all companies that were interdependent and participated in the same scheme. All this was done specifically in order to legalize funds that were obtained somehow incorrectly, not to steal them from another company, but to legalize them.
After this money was written off from the companies' accounts, it dissolved in the accounts of other legal companies around the world. According to this Moldovan scheme, about 26 billion US dollars were legalized during its entire existence.
Method 4 is art. The thing is that art prices can be anything. Thus, one art dealer declared that he was carrying a painting worth 100 dollars, when he was checked at customs, it turned out that he was carrying a painting worth 8 million dollars, and so on and so forth. There is a very fresh scandal, when the oligarch Rybolovlev filed a lawsuit against his art dealer, accusing him of doubling the cost of the art objects he was buying.
Let's see how it all ends. When buying certain works of art that are put up for sale at auction houses, Sotheby's, Crisby's, no one ever states who the buyer is, and no one ever checks the legality of the origin of the money that was used to buy certain works of art.
This is the law of this market. Naturally, dishonest citizens take advantage of this. Recently, the US has begun to combat money laundering and is forcing people to report all amounts that exceed 10 thousand dollars. Auction houses have gotten around this completely calmly. They split purchases into amounts less than 10 thousand dollars. That is, it turns out that there is not one transaction of 1 million dollars, but about 100 or more transactions, and they are not obliged to report on such a formal and absolutely stupid basis. Democracy, what can you expect from them.
And finally, the 5th method is virtual currencies. Bitcoin, altcoin, ether and everything else. With their help, as some believe, you can cover your tracks, but this is not always the case. For example, in the case of Liberty Reserve, through which more than 30 billion dollars passed. Not long ago, seven founders of this platform were arrested in the USA. Including for laundering money obtained by criminal means.
How do they launder money in Russia?
And what about Russia? Specifically, in Russia, everything is the old-fashioned way. Classic.
TOP-3 money laundering schemes.
1. Receiving proceeds from illegal drug trafficking to electronic wallets.
What are the characteristic signs of this? Incomprehensible comments on transactions, for example, behind the tank, astral, hard, numeric comments similar to the order number, a phrase similar to the address, Lenin 35 around the corner, under the tree, the same and frequent credits to the wallet with subsequent quick withdrawal of money. All this is monitored by Rosfin-monitoring, to this extent, keep this in mind.
2 is an artificial completion of the tax burden. It is known that a low tax burden is the main factor of a dubious client.
Transiters and cashers do not like to pay taxes. To increase tax deductions, payments are made to the budget settlement account - 40-101. But with the indication of the management of the correct details. The funds are returned back to the company account, and formally the amount of payments sent increases. And in such a simple way they try to deceive the system. And this only works for one-day firms that made some small transactions for 2-3 months, then died.
For a serious company, this no longer works.
3 is the use of vulnerabilities in antitrust and anti-money laundering laws. For example, transferring money from the account of a legal entity or individual entrepreneur to the account of an individual. Almost all control systems are configured to identify such transactions on the balance accounts of the recipient individual. However, the sender specifies deliberately incorrect accounts as the recipient's account, and specifies the correct details in the payment purpose.
The automatic control system does not look there. And it turns out that when the bank receives such a payment, it sees that there is an error, but the details are specified correctly, and therefore still executes, and the control is bypassed. But this is all for the time being. Again, if the bank sees this often enough, it will give the information to Rosfemonitoring, and there it will deal with such a recipient and sender more seriously.
In the Russian Federation, all this has already been digitalized, keep this in mind. Do not gamble with the state. To feel safe - do not launder money.
