Trade-Based Laundry

Trade-Based Money Laundering

From FATF-GAFI [Excerpt]

There are three main methods by which criminal organisations and terrorist financiers move money for the purpose of disguising its origins and integrating it into the formal economy. The first is through the use of the financial system; the second involves the physical movement of money (e.g. through the use of cash couriers); and the third is through the physical movement of goods through the trade system.

In recent years, the Financial Action Task Force has focused considerable attention on the first two of these methods. By comparison, the scope for abuse of the international trade system has received relatively little attention.

The international trade system is clearly subject to a wide range of risks and vulnerabilities that can be exploited by criminal organisations and terrorist financiers.

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Straight Up Laundry

How would I go about laundering money?

By Cecil Adams, 2009

It’s helpful for us law-abiding folk to understand the workings of the criminal mind. So let’s start at the beginning. Suppose you have a couple grocery bags full of ill-gotten cash. What do you do?

You don’t just spend it — Al Capone learned that the hard way when he was convicted of tax evasion. Modern bad guys understand that when large sums are involved, it’s important to make the loot appear to have been legally acquired. Money laundering accomplishes this in three steps: (1) getting the money into the financial system, called “placing,” (2) moving it around to hide the illegal taint, or “layering,” and (3) commingling it with legitimate funds, known as “integrating.”

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Debt of Credit System

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEBT
By Carolyn Baker, 2006

Never before have political leaders urged such large-scale indebtedness on American consumers to rally the economy. — Kevin Phillips, in American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics Of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money In The Twenty-First Century

In a recent conversation with a friend, a married mother of three, she anxiously confided that although she has never been scared about money in her entire adult life, she now, in her mid-forties, finds herself feeling terrified. “Sometimes I wonder,” she said tentatively, “if it’s our own fault or if it’s the world we now live in. I’ve never worked harder in my life, but I’ve never found myself and my family falling so far behind financially.”

[Many] are no doubt hearing similar anguish issuing from the mouths of friends and family, and in all likelihood, thinking similar thoughts, but they know that the frightening quagmire of debt in which

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Tinker Tank Trade

Nigeria: Armsgate – How Dasuki Paid Friends N5.6 Billion for 22 Tanks
Daily Trust (Abuja), by John Chuks Azu, 8 March 2017

A prosecution witness yesterday narrated how former National Security Adviser (NSA), retired Col. Sambo Dasuki, paid N5.6billion to companies owned by his friends to purchase 22 military tanks.

The witness, Hassan Saidu, an operative of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), was testifying in the trial of Col. Nicholas Ashinze, a former aide to Dasuki; Wolfgang Reinl, the General Manager of Geonel Integrated Services Ltd, Barrister Edidiong Ediong and Sagir Mohammed.

Other companies arraigned are: Unity Continental Nigeria Ltd, Helpline Organisation, Vibrant Resources Ltd and Sologic Integrated Services Ltd. EFCC claimed that younger brother to the former NSA, Abubakar Ibrahim Dasuki, retired Col. Bello Fadile and Bello Abayomi are still at large.

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Demanding Custom or Service

SECTION IV: HISTORICAL ISSUES
Margaret Thatcher and the EU
By David Ramiro Troitiño

Margaret Thatcher has been one of the most influential politicians in the European building process. Many people still share her ideas today and her participation in such issues as the Single European Act or the solution of the British question has consequences concerning our lives. So the reason to discuss this subject is not just to explain her attitude towards Europe and the EU, as that is already well known, but to explain the context of her decisions and especially to explain the consequences of her actions and ideas in the current European Union.

Thatcher was continuously a champion of the euro skeptics, a defender of national sovereignty and the independence of the EU member states from the European institutions. Her basic idea of Europe was related to loyalty and the transfer of this loyalty from the national to the European level. She considered the EU a utopia that could endanger our societies, our liberties, and our ways of life.

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1984 Iron for Euro

UK reimbursed in excess of €111 billion by EU since 1985
By Georgi Gotev, 2016

Thanks to the “UK rebate” won by Margaret Thatcher, over the last three decades, the United Kingdom has been reimbursed more than €111 billion from the EU budget […].

[In] the Brexit referendum, the European Commission missed the chance to highlight the fact that the UK has the best deal with the EU. Based on publicly available data, calculations show that beginning in 1985, when it was used for the first time, until 2014, the last year for which budget data is available, London was refunded a total of €111,124.10, or £85.5 billion, by Brussels. This is roughly the yearly amount of the EU budget.

Credit goes to Margaret Thatcher, who on 25 June 1984, at the Fontainebleau European Council, snatched the so-called “UK rebate”, by threatening to halt payments to the Communities budget unless she didn’t get a rebate.

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Pulling the EU Finger

EU budget: what’s happening to the British rebate?
From Fullfact.org, 2012

“OUTRAGE erupted last night after a secret European Union plot to grab £5.6billlion more from British taxpayers was exposed […] The move would slash Britain’s annual rebate from the European Union, won in hard-fought negotiations by Margaret Thatcher in 1984.” — Daily Express, November 15, 2012

“EU summit chair says rebate is being retained, but changes to way it is calculated mean cut of €1bn a year, say UK officials” — The Guardian, November 15, 2012

Next Thursday the European Union Council will convene to reach an agreement on the EU budget for the next seven years.

Today’s Daily Express puts the spotlight on a “secret European Union plot to grab £5.6 billion more from British taxpayers.” It’s been frequently reported by the press that the European Parliament is pushing for a spending increase. So, exactly how secret is this plot?

The evidence is a “leaked document from EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy” detailing proposals for raising the UK’s payment to Brussels by £800million a year for the next seven years.

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