Gangs in export business
OUTLAW motorcycle gangs, triads and other criminal groups are funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars offshore through businesses buying phones, liquor and luxury goods in a concerning form of money laundering.
The Australian Border Force has established an investigative unit after its intelligence found organised crime syndicates – notably the Comanchero Motorcycle Club – are making so much money from trafficking drugs they have started outsourcing to trade-based “laundry services” to move their cash.
Crime groups traditionally “washed” or disguised crime cash through casinos, pokie machines or crypto currency transfers, but the volume of money is now too great to risk these time-consuming processes.
Instead the crime cartels have up-ended money laundering by turning to third party money launderers, creating a new level of criminality for the war on drugs.
TPMLS, some using legitimate companies and a network of bank accounts, bulk trade in everything from mobile phones and luxury high-end goods including handbags, jewellery, cars and gold as a front to disguise cash being made from crime by turning it into commodities.
Those commodities are then exported to be on-sold through legitimate trade.
They are also converting cash into crypto currency simply to get it offshore but it then has to be withdrawn by TPMLS, which use it to buy goods.
In one instance, the OMCGS in Australia used TPMLS to buy a large consignment of iphones in the US for export to Mexico to sell in shops there, thereby not exporting cash directly but rather exporting the value of the drugs.
The money is then reintegrated into the criminal enterprise, either to pay off the cartel that had dispatched cocaine to Australia in the first place or transferring it back to Australia disguised as legitimate export trade.
In another example, one crime group bought high-end handbags in Australia to export to Hong Kong to create a trade profile to launder money.
Crime groups are also paying launderers to buy property paying a commission of 0.5 per cent to 3 per cent on the sale.
Such is the size of tradebased laundering, authorities have classed it as its own crime category threatening the global supply chain and international banking finances.
The ABF’S new border related financial crimes unit has intelligence analysts, customs experts and chartered accountants in Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra.
The team analyses and researches trade movements that could indicate a crime and hands that intelligence to its sister illicit trade unit team, whose field officers move to “intervene and disrupt”.
Set up only three months ago, the unit currently has 20 cases on its books.
“What we are seeing at the moment I think is just the tip of the iceberg,” the unit’s boss, Superintendent Paul Barfoot, said.
“Trade-based money laundering is disguising proceeds of crime via trade, moving funds offshore and legitimising illegal origins of the funds.
“We are finding it at such an exponential rate and the more we are looking the more we are finding which is why it has become a major focus for the ABF ... it’s a bigger problem than we initially realised”.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one US Homeland Security officer said most of the world’s trade was in US dollars and TPMLS were working in the US and China on behalf of criminal groups including Australian OMCGS.
“There are 100 different ways to launder money but there are only three or four ways to launder hundreds of millions or even billions and all those are related to international trade,” the agent said.
“A lot of the times, not hundreds of thousands of dollars in money laundering activity but millions of dollars in money laundering, that’s not practical to do through international wires where it can get flagged so it’s typically done via trade.”