Daphne Caruana Galizia and Ana Garrido Ramos winners of 2018 Anti-Corruption Award
Transparency International proudly announces that the late Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and Spanish whistleblower and campaigner Ana Garrido Ramos have been selected as winners of the 2018 Anti-Corruption Award. The awards were presented at a ceremony at the 18th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Copenhagen this evening.

Daphne Caruana Galizia’s son Matthew and husband Peter collected her award. Matthew Caruana Galizia said: “The bomb that took Daphne away from us extinguished the most powerful voice we ever had in our country’s fight for integrity. It also sought to rob us of the hope that her unwavering voice represented. Nothing will ever compensate for the journalist – let alone the person – we lost in her fight against corruption. But this award reminds us not only that hope remains ours to keep but that a large part of the world is hoping with us. It is an overwhelming and deeply emboldening thought for everyone fighting to win her justice and uphold her legacy. Thank you.”

Through her reporting, Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed corruption scandals involving influential politicians and others in Malta and abroad. Since her murder on October 16th, 2017, Maltese authorities have initiated criminal proceedings against her alleged killers, and an inquiry into whether anyone else should be charged.

Ms Caruana Galizia’s family have asked the government of Malta to establish a public inquiry to investigate whether the Maltese state bears any responsibility for her death, either through its failure to protect her or as a result of any state complicity…..Transparency

Daphne Caruana Galizia. Photo: Transparency International

The power of people’s pressure

Sunday 9 December is International Anti-Corruption Day. Together, we are #UnitedAgainstCorruption

Corruption impacts the poorest and most vulnerable in society the hardest.

It is ordinary citizens who suffer most when the corrupt steal funds intended for public services like infrastructure, healthcare and education, or take back-handers to award lucrative contracts to their cronies.

One in four people around the world say they have had to pay a bribe to access public services in the past twelve months.

But, when ordinary people fight back against corruption, they can make a real difference.
Leveraging people power

Across the world, Transparency International chapters work hard to help the public become involved and engaged in the fight against corruption…..Transparency

Tax transparency watchdog urges Israel to step up moves against money laundering
After global index puts Israel in top third of most financially secretive countries, NGO calls for more public scrutiny and regulations to stop rich from hiding their assets.

Israel must immediately move to pass regulations against tax evasion and money laundering if it is to protect its credit rating and avoid being shunned by the international financial community, a tax transparency watchdog cautioned in a report published Sunday.

The strongly worded advice coincided with a plea issued Monday by Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the 36-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon to speedily pass regulations enabling Israel to honor a commitment it made in 2014 to automatically exchange financial information….Timesofisrael.com

globalresearch.ca

Illegal profits used by Lebanese terrorist group to purchase weapons for Syrian war.
Lax German illicit terror finance policies permitted Hezbollah to run a vast enterprise to raise funds through a money laundering operation in Europe and South America.

French prosecutors put 15 members of the criminal organization on trial last week in Paris. According to three German media outlets – NDR, WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung – two of the accused men lived in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and an additional two men who were charged lived near the city-state of Bremen in northern Germany.

The members of the crime ring are charged with laundering Columbian narcotics money via a complex finance evasion scheme with the aid of the Lebanese diaspora.
“Germany is an ideal location for organized money laundering,” Sven Giegold, a Green Party member of the European Parliament, said according to a report in the paper Westfälischen Nachrichten.

“It is fully acceptable that one can pay cash for luxury goods or real estate,” Giegold said. “There are also no legal limits on the use of cash… Cash from dirty sources has a safe home in Germany.”
An export trader, named Ali Z., based in the city of Münster in North Rhine-Westphalia is believed to be one of the main alleged Hezbollah agents who oversaw the illegal narcotics operation that trafficked cocaine for a Columbian drug cartel, and used the profits to purchase weapons for Hezbollah to wage war in Syria……jpost.com/Israel-News

Germany allows 950 Hezbollah operatives to raise funds and recruit new members in the Federal Republic, according to numerous intelligence reports in the country that were reviewed by the Post. The United States, Canada, the Arab League, the Netherlands and Israel classify Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Germany and the European Union merely designate Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist entity.

Facebook/Kelly/ @KartoonistKelly

The European Commission on Thursday stepped up legal action against Malta and Luxembourg for not fully applying European Union rules to prevent money laundering at banks and through companies.

They are among several EU states where banks have been embroiled in money laundering scandals, but they have failed to strengthen their rules to counter financial crime, according to the EU Commission.

Malta has been subject to a rarely-used disciplinary procedure after serious shortcomings emerged in its supervision of Pilatus Bank, an international lender based on the island that was shut down this week by the European Central Bank over money laundering and fraud allegations.

The lender had received a clean sheet from Maltese authorities despite allegations of processing corrupt payments for senior Azeri and Maltese figures by investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed a year ago by a car bomb….EU steps up legal action against Malta, Luxembourg over money laundering/ Reuter

Malta had concerns about bank with Azeri clients, kept it open
Last April, a Maltese journalist published stories saying a private bank on her island was serving high-ranking customers in Azerbaijan, and alleging it was processing corrupt payments. Six months later the journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was murdered.

A human rights organization has asked Dutch prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into multi-billion dollar money laundering schemes that they say were aided by Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his old law firm.

The complaint is clearly aimed at examining how much money stolen from a former Soviet satellite ended up benefitting Trump. He is named 16 times in the complaint’s footnotes.

The complaint describes “one of the biggest fraud cases ever” in which “some of these money flows ultimately ended up in the Netherlands” because “Dutch service providers helped to cover up the money laundering acts.”

“The money laundering network started in Kazakhstan, where a figure of up to USD 10 billion was purportedly embezzled,” the complaint asserts. “This money was subsequently circulated by two Kazakh oligarch families via a worldwide network of shell companies. A number of these companies were established in the Netherlands. The money was subsequently invested in real estate projects in the United States and Europe, after which it was paid out as ‘profits’ via – once again – a network of shell companies.”….
Human Rights Group Calls for Investigation of Giuliani, Trump Money-Laundering Scheme Prosecutors Asked to Probe Dutch Middlemen Washing Billions in Dirty Kazakh Cash for Real Estate Deals in US and Europe
Dutch Trump Complaint