Money laundering is one of the main 'engines of crime' sustaining global criminal enterprises and is worth billions of dollars. The increasingly global and virtual nature of financial services and the emergence of technology-enabled products, such as crypto currencies and anonymization tools, have made the task of combating it more difficult.To complicate things, controlling much of this mega-illicit activity are global money laundering syndicates, who offer their services to criminal networks, and are highly adept at exploiting gaps in the financial systems. Another complication to the compliance function is the complex legal requirements set by each country to limit the international flows of illicit funds. These are the challenging conditions within which anti-money laundering (AML) and Counter Terrorism Financing (CTF) measures currently operate.Money laundering takes place in all forms and shapes. There are no social, economic, geographic, or professional boundaries immune from abuse which can facilitate money laundering. Artwork, antiquities, antiques, precious stones, and exotic cars are among a few of the items frequently used. This book will explore elements of money laundering that touch all these areas.To understand money laundering, one must understand the history of money laundering and the evolution of the inclusion of priceless items as a means of laundering illegitimate and elicit funds. This guide is an essential tool to learn, understand, expand, and maintain a proper understanding of money laundering flows and how to prepare the financial industry for evolving risks.I grew up in Miami in the 80's and early 90's, a time when money laundering and drug trafficking through the city reached its peak. In fact, my banking career started at the height of the Cocaine Cowboy era in the mid-80's. At this time financial regulations were still in their infancy and technology to manage the detection and monitoring of white-collar financial crimes by financial institutions did not yet exist. I started off as a part time teller at a large Miami Beach bank while still in high school. This experience provided me with my first exposure to how billions of dollars in cash was making its way into banks across the city. I often refer to Miami as ground zero for money laundering, as well as for my education on the subject. I grew professionally inside Miami banks by securing positions in audit departments where I developed firsthand knowledge of the various facets of banking. In the early 90s I continued to grow professionally, shifting my focus towards the growing realm of financial technology. At the time, cutting edge technology consisted of personal computers which were still in their early stages of development, and there was a sharp learning curve for myself and my colleagues trying to understand how to use shared desktop terminals and PC's for the first time. My experience with technology within the financial sphere expanded in the late 90's and 2000's when I grew to develop a greater understanding of the role of software and how certain programs could be used in combination with advancing technology - that is, newer, faster desktop computers and laptops - to facilitate the implementation of infrastructure within institutions that could be used to both enhance operational efficiency, as well as create processes that could be utilized to ensure that institutions could comply with new and evolving regulatory requirements. The bulk of these regulations would come to be encompassed within the USA PATRIOT Act.

Find out how the world's best money launderers evade sohisticated high-tech detection measures and move money freely in the electronic age. Also find out the latest international law enforcement countermeasures for stopping this illegal flow of money. A must for cops, lawyers, PIs and others.

A thrilling, eye-popping look at true crime in the billion-dollar art world. The art world is one of the most secretive of global businesses, and the list of its crimes runs long and deep. Today, with prices in the hundreds of millions for individual artworks, and billionaires' collections among the most conspicuous and liquid of their assets, crime is more rampant than ever in this largely unregulated universe. Increased prices and globalization have introduced new levels of fraud and malfeasance into the art world--everything from "artnapping," in which an artwork is held hostage and only returned for a ransom, to forgery and tax fraud. However, the extent of the economic and cultural damage that results from criminality in the global art scene rarely comes to light. The stories of high-stakes, brazen art crimes told by art experts Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm are by turns thrilling, disturbing, and unbelievable (the imagination for using art to commit crimes seems boundless). The authors also provide a well-founded analysis of what needs to change in the art market and at museums. From the authors of False Pictures, Real Money (about the Beltracchi art forgery case), Art and Crime includes a chapter on art owned by Donald Trump. It is a thoroughly researched, explosive, and highly topical book that uncovers the extraordinary and multifarious thefts of art and cultural objects around the world.

"Money laundering is a problem of some magnitude internationally and has long term negative economic impacts. Brigitte Unger argues that today, money laundering is largely linked to fraud and that it is not only small islands and tax heavens that launder, but increasingly industrialized countries like the US, Australia the Netherlands and the UK. Well-established financial markets and growing economies with sound political and social structures attract launderers in the same way as they attract honest capital. The book gives an interdisciplinary overview of the state-of-the-art of money laundering as well as describing the legal problems of defining and fighting money laundering. It then goes on to present a number of economic models designed to measure money laundering and applies these to measuring the size of laundering in the Netherlands and Australia. The book also gives an overview of techniques and potential effects of money laundering identified and measured so far in the literature. It adds to this debate by calculating the effects of laundering on crime and economic growth. This book will be of great interest to lawyers, financial experts, economists, political scientists, as well as to government ministries, international and national organizations and central banks."--Jacket.

Uncover the financial fraud that funds terrorist organizations Trade-Based Money Laundering is an authoritative examination of this burgeoning phenomenon, now coming under scrutiny in the War on Terror. This book walks you through the signs and patterns of trade-based money laundering (TBML) to help you recognize it when it occurs, and shows you how data and analytics can be used to detect it. You'll learn the common value transfer techniques including invoice fraud, over-and-under invoicing, and misrepresentation, and learn why analytic detection systems have yet to be implemented despite the existence of copious data. Case studies from around the world highlight the real-life implications of the concepts and processes presented in the text, giving you a first-hand view of the mechanisms at work inside this expanding illegal market. Trade-based money laundering uses trade to convert large quantities of illicit cash into less conspicuous assets or commodities to evade financial transparency laws and regulations. As an ideal funding mechanism for terrorist groups, the practice is getting more attention even as it increases in scale and spread. This book takes you deep inside TBML to better arm you against its occurrence. Learn the typical value transfer techniques of TBML Examine case studies detailing international examples Discover why institutions have failed to implement detection systems Explore ways in which analytics can identify TBML According to the U.S. State Department, TBML has reached staggering proportions in recent years, and is considered by many to be the next frontier of international money laundering enforcement. Trade-Based Money Laundering gives you a battle plan, with expert insight and real-world guidance.

Although the practice of disguising the illicit origins of money dates back thousands of years, the concept of money laundering as a multidisciplinary topic with social, economic, political and regulatory implications has only gained prominence since the 1980s. This groundbreaking volume offers original, state-of-the-art research on the current money laundering debate and provides insightful predictions and recommendations for future developments in the field. The contributors to this volume academics, practitioners and government representatives from around the world offer a number of unique perspectives on different aspects of money laundering. Topics discussed include the history of money laundering, the scale of the problem, the different types of money laundering, the cost to the private sector, and the effectiveness of anti-money laundering policies and legislation. The book concludes with a detailed and insightful synthesis of the problem and recommendations for additional steps to be taken in the future. Students, professors and practitioners working in economics, banking, finance and law will find this volume a comprehensive and invaluable resource.

A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, Casey Michel's American Kleptocracy offers an explosive investigation into how the United States of America built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known. "An indefatigable young American journalist who has virtually cornered the international kleptocracy beat on the US end of the black aquifer." —The Los Angeles Review of Books For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn’t been the sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama, that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the USA. American Kleptocracy examines just how the United States’ implosion into a center of global offshoring took place: how states like Delaware and Nevada perfected the art of the anonymous shell company, and how post-9/11 reformers watched their success usher in a new flood of illicit finance directly into the U.S.; how African despots and post-Soviet oligarchs came to dominate American coastlines, American industries, and entire cities and small towns across the American Midwest; how Nazi-era lobbyists birthed an entire industry of spin-men whitewashing trans-national crooks and despots, and how dirty money has now begun infiltrating America's universities and think tanks and cultural centers; and how those on the front-line are trying to restore America's legacy of anti-corruption leadership—and finally end this reign of American kleptocracy.