Money laundering probes

Report reveals suspicious financial transactions down by 2% in Ireland

MALAYSIA has a new prime minister less than a week after the unexpected resignation of Mahathir Mohamad plunged its politics into turmoil.

Muhyiddin Yassin, backed by the corruptiontarnished former governing party, was sworn in by the king.

ALMOST 24,000 reports of suspected cases of money laundering or terrorist financing were reported to the Irish authorities in 2018.

New figures published by the Department of Justice show a total of 23,939 reports of suspicious transactions were made to gardai – a decrease of almost 2% on the previous year.

A slightly smaller number of cases – 23,442 – were reported to Revenue, despite the requirement to also notify the tax authorities and Revenue of all suspicious activity.

The latest annual report on money laundering and terrorist financing indicates more than 80% of cases concerned tax-related offences.

Revenue said information generated from such reports resulted in an additional tax yield of €4.7million.

Criminal proceedings resulted in 73 individuals being charged with 284 money laundering offences in 2018. A total of 28 individuals were convicted of 130 money laundering offences – up from 11 in 2017 – while one person was convicted of two terrorist financing offences.

Hassan Bal, 26, was jailed for two-anda-half years at Waterford Circuit Criminal Court after pleading guilty to providing and attempting to provide funding for ISIS.

In 2018, the Criminal Assets Bureau also secured court orders freezing 85 bank accounts and obtained a total of 228 orders over assets valued at €14.4million which were suspected of being the proceeds of crime such as drug trafficking, fraud and smuggling. The report said the quality of information submitted in the reports had improved during 2018 following the acquisition of new software.

It added: “It is now mandatory for all reporting entities to specify what the potential criminal indicator is for each suspicious transaction report. “This assists in the prioritisation process.” While money laundering and terrorist financing differ in many ways, the report said they often exploited the same vulnerabilities in financial systems that allow for an inappropriate level of transparency in the executive of financial transactions.

Banks, credit unions and payments institutions accounted for 92% of reports of suspicious financial transactions, with banks alone reporting 61% of all cases.

Checks carried out by staff from the Anti-money Laundering Compliance Unit of the Department of Justice found a noticeable decrease in compliance levels during 2018.

The rate of trust or company service providers who were fully compliant had fallen to 44% from 58% the previous year, while full compliance rates in private members clubs fell from 86% to 50%.

Dealers in high-value goods, who also have legal obligations to report suspicious activity, were fully compliant in 67% of cases – down from 72% in 2017.

Anyone found guilty of money laundering faces a maximum of 14 years’ jail.

80 per cent of cases in 2018 concerned tax-related offences

73 people were charges with offences and 28 were convicted