The Art Market and Money Laundering
Visiting art fairs has become more common nowadays. Imagine you are visiting Art Basel or Sotheby’s. Standing in front of an artwork with a powerful stroke on it, and there’s a little red sticker beside the artist’s statement saying “SOLD”. The paintings sold for one million dollars, and you may wonder how the sellers measure […]
Pandora Papers – Spotlight on Shell Companies
What is the Pandora Papers? The Pandora Papers is a leak of almost 12 million documents exposing the hidden wealth and offshore dealings of the world’s most rich and powerful people to avoid tax, and in some cases also engage in criminal activities such as money laundering. The data, originating from the confidential records of […]
New threats of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing after COVID-19 pandemic — Effective measures to combat the emerging risks
COVID-19 poses unprecedented challenges not only to global societies and economies but also to the operations of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT). Substantial increase in risks and crimes associated with money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) are reported and predicted globally due to the significant changes in financial behaviours and patterns after the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to […]
First ever North Korean national extradited to U.S. for money laundering charges – Implications for professional firms with clients in cross-border business
First North Korean extradited to U.S. faces money laundering charges In March 2021, Mun Chol-myong, who has ties to the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a North Korean intelligence agency that manages the state’s clandestine operations, was the first North Korean to be extradited from Malaysia to the United States. Mun was arrested in Malaysia in 2019 on charges […]
The Most Common Money Laundering Schemes — How Professional Firms Stay ahead of criminal activity?
What is Money Laundering? According to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), money laundering is the processing of criminal proceeds to disguise their illegal origin. In other words, it is a technique used by criminals to “clean” the illegally obtained money and conceal the source of funds through financial transactions, and finally release laundered money into the […]
Phone Scams and Anti-Money Laundering
In recent months, there have been an increase in phone scammers in Singapore . Such scammers would impersonate themselves as employees of DHL, DBS or Chinese authorities and claim that the victim has an illegal parcel held by the Chinese customs, and they would require the victim to transfer huge sums of money to get […]
Don’t Be a Corporate Money Mule
Abdul Ghani Tahir, a director of a company, was recently convicted to 2 years 3 months and barred from being a company director for 5 years, for his role in laundering $1.2 million of illicit funds. The full report of the news can be found here. Interestingly, Abdul Ghani is a Chartered Accountant and also […]