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Dirty Money for Laundries Selling illegal drugs

游客2023-09-13  18
问题                              Dirty Money for Laundries
    Selling illegal drugs is big business and laundering the proceeds an art form. One kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of raw coca leaves is worth $1,400 in Latin America. By the time it is turned into refined cocaine, its value has grown to $100,000. Making the money appear to have come from a legitimate source that can create a paper trail spanning dozens of countries, and a web of financial transactions that may be impossible to unravel.
    The United Nations has estimated that between $120 billion and $500 billion is laundered each year in the industrial world  bigger than the volume of the oil trade.
    Illegally obtained money is difficult to openly spend and invest: Drug cash often consists of large volumes of mixed denomination notes; the physical volume of notes can be far larger than the volume of the drugs themselves. Performing large transactions without arousing suspicion is the launderer’s principal hurdle.
    Different countries have different disclosure requirements, and the launderer seeks to exploit that by moving money between jurisdictions and covering up the audit trail. Terry Burke of the National Drugs Intelligence Unit in Britain said: "The big cases are so international in scale, and it can be very difficult to lift the veil of secrecy."
    Investigators have identified three main stages in the laundering process.
    In the first stage, the money can be deposited in a legitimate premium life insurance policy. Or the cash can be used to buy ’art, jewelry, antiques or gambling chips.
    The second stage is called "layering". The launderer wants to separate his illicit proceeds from their source so he enters into a large number of financial transactions designed to disguise the trail and provide anonymity.
    Finally, there is "integration". If the layering has been successful, the launderer will bring the money back into the economy in such a way that it appears to be normal business funds. So, an art object will be sold, a life insurance policy redeemed, and so on.
    The BCCI scandal is a classic instance of drug-related financial abuse. With total assets in 1988 of $20 billion and 417 branches in 73 countries, BCCI was considered the seventh-biggest private bank in the world. In its case, prosecutors alleged that one scheme it operated was to collect cash in various American cities, which was deposited. The money was then transferred by wire to BCCI accounts abroad and used to buy certificates of deposit that acted as collateral for BCCI "loans" to the drug traffickers, supplying them with "clean" money.
    Another money laundering investigation in the United States and Britain, code-named Operation Cougar, has so far identified $318 million of "dirty" money. The laundering operation spanned the Isle of Man, the British Virgin Islands and the U.S. mainland, and involved seven drug dealing organizations. At the center of each organization was a lawyer who coordinated the movement of money between offshore bank accounts, shelf companies and nominee directors.
     One trick was to use the organizations’ offshore companies to mortgage property. On the face of it, the paper trail was legitimated--the mortgage was bona fide, and interest payments were met. But as the financial layers were peeled back, the illicit origin of the money became apparent. So far, Operation Cougar has resulted in the imprisonment of 40 people.
    One method that has come to the attention of the authorities more recently is the launderers’ use of Hawala banks  family-run businesses offering money transmission services, Interpol became sufficiently worried to mount a two-day conference on the subject earlier this year. Hawala originates in Asia and is basically a system of letters of credit, providing a legitimate channel for the movement of money from one area to another, safely and securely. With the spread of Third World immigration it has become common across Europe. But its very secrecy has made it a target for drugs dealers as a way to move their money around.
    National laws that make money laundering a crime have already been introduced in countries including the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Luxembourg, and international cooperation among law enforcement agencies has intensified. But as detection becomes more sophisticated, so does the money launderer.
    A variety of initiatives to combat drug trafficking and money laundering have been launched, in December 1988, the worldwide banking community adopted what it called the Basel Statement of Principles, in an effort to prevent launderers from using the financial system. The G-7 group of industrial nations has established a financial task force to coordinate their efforts, and in June the European Community approved a directive on money laundering. It aims to make customer identification and the retention of customer records mandatory. Member states are required to implement the directive by Jan.1, 1993.
    All these initiatives are predicated on the principle that the best way to fight drug traffickers and money launderers is to close off their avenues of operation: Financial institutions should know their customers and be alert to any suspicious transactions. From the institutions’ point of view, it is in their interest to maintain public confidence in the integrity of the financial system and avoid association with criminals.
    The Basel statement, which has formed a basis for guidelines and legislation, sets out the following basic areas for action:
    * Customer identification — Every effort should be made to discover the true identity of any new customer requesting a service.
    * Compliance—All transactions should conform to high ethical standards and local laws and regulations. Institutions should cooperate with law enforcement authorities to the full extent permitted without breaking customer confidentiality.
    * Record keeping and systems—Institutions should have specific procedures to keep internal records and have an effective means of checking.
    * Training—Staff should be fully trained to recognize and report any suspicious transactions.
     Cracking clown on money laundering is, by its very nature, extremely difficult. Insurance businesses in Britain recently received guidelines on the subject and were provided examples of what types of transactions should make them suspicious.
    These examples included a sudden request for a significant purchase of a lump sum contract with an existing client whose current contracts are small and of regular payments; a proposal to purchase and settle in cash or with a check drawn from anything other than the personal account of the proposer; a prospective client who is more interested in the cancellation or surrender aspects of a contract than its investment performance, and so on.
    In the United States, the authorities require all financial transactions of over $10,000 to be reported. Australia has a similar requirement. The U.S. authorities see around six million reports under this system every year. A recent report by the G-7’s task force suggested that these programs were proving effective by creating extra risks for the launderers. For example, it said that "communities" asked by money launderers amounts to 2 ~ 4 percent per deal in the early 1980s but commonly reach 6 ～ 8 percent now.
    Experts outside the United States, however, are skeptical of the system’s efficacy. Mr. Burke of the British drugs intelligence unit said: "It just creates a huge bureaucracy of reporting and the results don’t justify the expenditure."
    Such arguments persuaded the European Community not to go quite so far. The EC system will still be based largely on suspicion. According to the directive, money laundering is to be made a criminal offense in all member states. Banks and other institutions will be required to demand formal identification from all clients engaged in single transactions of more than 15,000 European currency units. [br] Among the seven world-biggest private banks, only BCCI was engaged in drug-related financial abuse.
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案 C
解析 本题的关键词是the seven world-biggest private banks和BCCI，定位原文第9段，文中提到BCCI有这样的行为，并非题干中所云：只直BCCI…所以题干主旨是与原文范围上有出入的。故本题答案是NG。
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