Top 3 news KYC/AML/CFT bimonthly/2 of October 2023
Here is Top 3 & more KYC/AML/CTF information for the period 15 - 31 October 2023.
News on high-risk countries??: 1??the EU list?? of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes has been updated. Antigua and Barbuda, Belize and Seychelles were added, British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica and Marshall Islands were removed. 2?? FATF grey list has been updated??, Bulgaria has entered the list and Albania, Cayman, Jordan and Panama has been removed from the list. See also my recent post?? on the updated list of high-risk countries.
FinCEN has declared?? transactions involving convertible virtual currency (CVC) mixing as a "primary money laundering concern" under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, requiring financial institutions to implement strict monitoring and reporting requirements for these transactions. ?? CVC mixing transactions are frequently used by criminals and state actors to facilitate a range of illicit activity, including, but not limited to, money laundering, sanctions evasion and WMD proliferation by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea), Russian-associated ransomware attacks, and illicit darknet markets.
An alert?? concerning funding flows in support of the HAMAS has been issued by FinCEN. The document outlines 7 red flags ?? indicators to help detect, prevent and report potential suspicious activity related to terrorist financing activity by Hamas. ??The typologies highlight the risks stemming from transactions involving MSB, virtual currencies, geographic areas with high risk of terrorist financing, involvement of companies with opaque shareholding structure or non-profit organizations involved in raising donations for various charitable causes. ??It must be mentioned that HAMAS (aka The Islamic Resistance Movement, Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamiya) is a designated entity?? on official sanctions lists issued by Israel ( 22.06.1989) OFAC SDN( 08.10.1997); UN( 28.09.2001); EU( 28.12.2001); Canada( 27.11.2002), Japan( 01.10.2003) and Australia (16.09.2022). Despite this fact, HAMAS was named one of the world's richest terrorist groups by Forbes in 2014, with an estimated annual turnover of around $1 billion. According to media information the organization is funded from the following sources:1??financial support provided by Iran of about $100 million per year; 2??donations: funds collected openly (Zakat, an Islamic charitable donation) or through charities or front organizations; 3??smuggling: $12-15 million per month taxes on goods entering Gaza through smuggled tunnels 4??embezzlement: diverting humanitarian aid received by NGOs and charities for military purposes; 5??protection fees and extortion: payments in exchange for protection or to allow businesses to operate in controlled areas; 6?? funding from Palestinians in the diaspora. Hamas received about $41 million in 2022-2023 through P2P cryptocurrency transfers ; 7??criminal activities: drug trafficking and smuggling; 8??investments: in 2022 Hamas managed to raise more than $500 million by investing in companies in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Algeria and Sudan, mainly in real estate or construction. ? In 2023, Hamas paid its members and officials around $34 million monthly in the form of bonuses/salaries/pensions.
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FCA fined?? Equifax Ltd ￡11 million (?after 30% discount) for ? the largest cyber security breaches in history that affected approximately 13.8 million customers in the UK . ??The breach allowed hackers to access the personal data of millions of people and exposed UK consumers to the risk of financial crime.
In an Joint Opinion?? on the proposed Regulation on the digital euro The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) "strongly recommend to introduce a ‘privacy threshold’ for online transactions, under which neither offline nor online low-value transactions are traced for purposes of anti-money laundering (AML) and for combatting the financing of terrorism (CFT)"