How Dirty Money Disappears Into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency
Journal investigation documents suspicious trades through venture capital-backed ShapeShift..

After hackers believed to be from North Korea extorted millions of dollars in the so-called WannaCry ransomware attack on businesses and governments, the criminals used ShapeShift to convert bitcoin into an untraceable cryptocurrency called Monero, security researchers found. For the next year, ShapeShift made no changes to its policy of not identifying its customers, and continued to process millions of dollars in criminal proceeds, according to the Journal investigation.

Many cryptocurrency exchanges say they follow federal rules intended to combat money laundering, even though the question of whether they are subject to them hasn’t been tested. They keep records of their customers’ identity and monitor transactions to root out and report suspicious activity…The Black Hole Of Cryptocurrency

US House Passes Bill for Task Force to Combat Crypto Use by Terrorists/Cointelegraph.com

Over the past few years, Hezbollah operatives engaged in money-laundering, narcotics trafficking, and other illegal schemes.

Hezbollah’s European Criminal Network:

Across Europe, in countries large and small, intelligence and law enforcement officials have tracked the movement of Hezbollah operatives involved in a wide array of activities. Over the past few years, Hezbollah operatives engaged in money-laundering, narcotics trafficking, and other illegal schemes have been arrested in Lithuania[15] and France,[16] offices were raided and a Hezbollah-linked charity blacklisted in Germany,[17] and individuals and companies were designated as Hezbollah terrorist entities for carrying out illicit business activity for Hezbollah in Europe….
Hezbollah’s European Criminal Network

The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the identification of The Lebanese Canadian Bank SAL together with its subsidiaries (LCB) as a financial institution of primary money laundering concern under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Section 311) for the bank’s role in facilitating the money laundering activities of an international narcotics trafficking and money laundering network.  This network moves illegal drugs from South America to Europe and the Middle East via West Africa and launders hundreds of millions of dollars monthly through accounts held at LCB, as well as through trade-based money laundering involving consumer goods throughout the world, including through used car dealerships in the United States.  Treasury has reason to believe that LCB managers are complicit in the network’s money laundering activities. Today’s action also exposes the terrorist organization Hizballah’s links to LCB and the international narcotics trafficking and money laundering network.  ..Treasury Identifies Lebanese Canadian Bank Sal as a “Primary Money Laundering Concern”

Cocaine Money Laundering

Rodrigo Matos
www.w-t-w.org/en/rodrigo-de-matos
www.rodrigocartoon.com

Women Networks Fight Against Corruption and Money Laundering

The Finance Sector provides a crucial backbone to the European Economy and -like many other sectors- its increasing dependency on ICT Infrastructures, Providers and their Supply Chain. The importance of ICT Security and Resilience supporting the Finance Sector grew considerably and the objective of protecting automated Inter-Banking transactions and more generally all types of Communications is altogether more critical and complex at the same time.

A stable Financial System in Europe is however the underlying foundation for Economic stability; and the reliance on IT is now life critical for the entire Sector.

Technical Cooperation between the key actors of the Finance Sector at pan-European level becomes an urgent need as the sector faces stronger and larger scale challenges. The following effects of the current silo approach for the protection of the Banks and Finance Institutions presents many inconveniences, such as:

• • • the Implementation of a multitude of security and technical standards, difficult to maintain;
    • the Loss of Interoperability;
    • Imposibility to implement Safe Harbouring, Mutual Aid Assistance;
    • Hosting of more System types, less secure;
    • General Vulnerability to Cyber Attacks.

  NIS support to Financial Resilience
  Twitter :  @enisa_eu

Financial crises | The Economist

Gangsters’ paradise: Germany

Lax laws draw criminal gangs from around the world to Germany. Constrained by strict regulation and mind-boggling bureaucracy, police are struggling to fight crime.

Germany is one of the first choices for gangs worldwide when it comes to washing dirty money, as a Sicilian official recently confirmed. “I’d invest in Germany,” said Robert Scarpinato, Palermo’s public prosecutor…..Money Laundering

Rodrigo Matos
www.w-t-w.org/en/rodrigo-de-matos
www.rodrigocartoon.com

Elizabeth Warren‏: My office found that Rusal America Corp – a subsidiary of a sanctioned company controlled by a Russian oligarch & Putin ally – got an exemption from @realDonaldTrump’s aluminum tariffs days after he met with Putin in Helsinki. I asked the Trump Admin why.

Hundreds of companies have asked the Trump administration for a special break from its sweeping aluminum tariffs. Few have succeeded. One that managed to get an exemption is a Russian firm currently subject to Treasury Department sanctions.

How Rusal America — a branch of a Russian metals giant controlled by an oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin — managed to win an exclusion highlights the chaotic and unwieldy process surrounding President Trump’s tariffs……NYTimes.com