Financial Intelligence: “Whoever didn’t hide, I’m not to blame!”

[Объединенное Детективное Бюро]

Bank deposits, stocks, electronic money, cash, dozens of types of cashless payments - without all this, the existence of society and the state is unthinkable today. In Soviet times, control over the "circulation of capital" was dealt with by the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In modern Russia, work in this area has become much more. But on the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs new problems fell. In order to unload the power structures and create a system of quality control, the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring was created, in other words, the financial intelligence service. Its main tasks are combating the legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime and the discovery of channels for financing terrorism. Let the name “service” not confuse you, it is a large organization comparable in structure and tasks with the ministry. It consists of ten departments: the financial investigation department, the affairs and personnel department, the information technology department, the security and information protection department, the analysis and coordination department, the supervisory organization department, the international relations department, the legal department, the financial administration department counter terrorism financing. - Why are people trying to legalize illegal income? - says an employee of the FSFM Alexei Pryanikov. - To explain the origin of their capital to the state. Any financial transaction has its own history, its own "business card" - a trace and special signs. Our main task is to identify the cash flow, all stages of its passage and the person in whose interests the legalization of funds obtained by dishonesty occurs. The financial and tax reporting of legal entities and individuals helps us to monitor cash flows; field inspections of companies and banks by regulatory authorities; external audits; internal audit; control within professional associations and self-regulatory organizations. All information obtained by the above methods undergoes a thorough analysis. Where at least the slightest doubt or suspicion arises, an investigation begins. Let's say there was a large company that was engaged in the processing of gold and the sale of jewelry in Europe. All financial documents are normal, profit is growing by leaps and bounds. However, FSFM employees, considering documents on the supply of gold by the miners to the company and on the number of jewelry sold by the company, find a number of inconsistencies: the same batch of goods was sold several times. It turned out later that drug dealers laundered money in this way, using this company to inject cash received from selling drugs in Russia into the European banking system. When the scheme was identified, the case was sent to the prosecutor. More crime related to money laundering occurs through banks and forged enterprises. For laundering large capital without the help of bank employees who provide assistance to criminals, as a rule, you can not do. FSFM employees believe that any legalization of money has its own specific stages. The first is the allocation of funds. That is, the conversion of cash into non-cash by depositing in banks or combining this cash with the proceeds of a legitimate business through an intermediary financial institution, as well as the acquisition of values, real estate. Further, this money goes through the stage of movement - penetration into the international banking sector. This is the process of transferring money from one account to another through a series of operations. At the same time, in order to mask “traces of money”, the main task of which is to make it impossible to determine the original owner of the funds, anonymity of accounts and bank secrecy are used. The main channel here is international money transfers, allowing you to use the differences in the laws of different countries. “They mask their tracks in different ways,” continues Alexei Pryanikov. “Money goes through a large number of financial institutions, sometimes they use an underground bank account system. The third, final stage of funds legalization is integration, that is, the transfer of actually legalized capital to the original owner of the funds or to the accounts of the necessary organizations. “The bulk of the cases sent to the prosecutor’s office,” explains Alexei Pryanikov, “are those that began to be studied at the stage of placement and relocation.” Alas, financial intelligence at the stage of integration of funds, when employees did not track the initial stages, turns into an extremely difficult task. But with this you have to deal extremely rarely. One of the methods of money laundering, according to employees of the FSFM, can be the creation of a commercial structure, and the mixing of profits derived from legitimate business activities with profits from criminal activities. The organization around the company of a large number of offshore partners can also serve as a cover for introducing illegal capital into official circulation. The advantage in using such a scheme is twofold: firstly, the creation of a successful mechanism for laundering, and secondly, the ability to sell all or part of a business to investors unaware of its nature. With the advent of modern banking technologies (primarily electronic), it becomes much more difficult for financial control authorities to identify constantly improving operations to legalize illegal proceeds. In this regard, experts discuss the following aspects of the fight against money laundering: strengthening banking control, creating a wide network of personal data to facilitate operational investigative and investigative measures (based on the American model), as well as the adoption of legal norms establishing the need for a suspect to prove that his money or other property is not associated with violations of the law. “Non-standard schemes are used in their work by people transferring capital to terrorist and other activities directed against the constitutional system of Russia,” says Alexei Pryanikov. - Suppose a certain non-profit public organization works in Russia. Many millions of “donations” are transferred to her account. The true goal of the head of such an organization is the same - to channel these amounts into arming gangs and printing extremist literature. But how to do this when all donations are declared, and the organizations keep financial records for all expenses? They come up with a scheme. The proxy of bandits opens a company that, for example, promotes the interests of commercial organizations on the Internet. The organization prepares an estimate for supposedly monitoring, “sowing” articles in the blogosphere, etc. A public organization pays the required amount. Further, according to the estimate, this amount is cashed to pay for the work of bloggers. There are pseudo-bloggers working in this company who sign their fees. After tax, the laundered amounts are placed by pseudo-bloggers in bank accounts, from which, after another two or three stages of financial transactions, bandits withdraw money. At one time, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported that as a result of joint investigations of financial monitoring officers of Russia, American financial intelligence and the FBI against the international organization Benevolens International Foudation, led by US citizen Anaam Arnaut, facts of money transfer to purchase special mine boots designed for militants in Chechnya. The verdict in this case has already been passed by an American court, Arnaut sentenced to eleven years in prison. At the time of the audit, financial intelligence officers in Russia had only a payment order, from which it followed that the funds were sent to charity: the purchase of blankets, clothes and shoes. And only when this information became the property of American services, the true meaning of this "charity" was established by operational investigations. And these are not isolated cases. There is a lot of work for financial intelligence and it cannot be said that everything works out. However, in general, the trend is such that for criminals specializing in money laundering and terrorist financing, thanks to financial monitoring staff, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do their dirty work from year to year. [DLMURL] https://www.razvedinfo.ru/node/1067 [/ DLMURL]

 

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

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