All of us, bank users and financial institutions alike, have had to learn the basic terms used in anti-money laundering policies, known by the acronym AML. The Group for International Financial Action – GAFI – was created to prevent money laundering; in the last few years GAFI has issued the general guidelines for fighting this crime. Based on the recommendations of GAFI, every country has promulgated laws and the financial institutions (banks, financial companies, credit and prepaid card issuers, etc.) have drawn up their own policies. These policies vary from country to country and institution to institution. Obviously, the legislators have focused on crimes related on money laundering, but none of them has taken into consideration that there could be abuses in this polices.
Check how the extortion was developed:
The offshore lawyer Giovanni Caporaso Gottlieb reports that: “Because of a lack of regulation, there are small financial institutions, without scruples, that abuse the AML policies to the detriment of the consumers and this must be corrected immediately with strict laws.” Various cases have been given in the last few months; for example, the Loyal Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines was investigated by US authorities because of a case of money laundering by means of art objects. The customers weren’t informed and when they attempted to withdraw their savings, the bank started to request documents upon documents, with the excuse of complying with the AML norms. The Financial Authorities of St. Vincent only intervened months later by putting the bank in liquidation. The same thing happened with the Choice Bank of Belize. All of the account holders of both banks have been deceived for months with useless requests for documentation to comply with the AML Policies.
The case of Intercash, a provider of MasterCard cards is much more serious. Intercash, property of Andaria Ltd., a company that states that it is registered in the Isle of Man, with program of issuing prepaid cards, ISO approved by MasterCard, “which according to us,” explains the lawyer Caporaso, “has scammed one of our corporate clients, arriving at extorting the company into accepting huge supposed expenses for a hypothetical investigation in compliance with the AML policies.
“The absurd thing is that,” Caporaso continues, “in the future we can see that the banks and financial entities charge absurd amounts for supposed AML investigations, when they should have to reissue the cases to the proper authorities to fight these crimes, since no law exists that grants investigative powers to the financial institutions.
The question is, who controls the controller?
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