I have been attending commercial AML conferences for seventeen years now, and I generally find the course content at such events totally bereft of actual money laundering tactics and strategies. Generally, you hear a lot about the law, about public policy, and perhaps a case or two, but they never teach you the genuine tradecraft of the "profession". If you don't learn the nuts and bolts of actual laundering, you simply cannot identify and interdict it in real-time. "Tradecraft 101: a Money Launderer Diagrams Tactics & Techniques," seeks to change that. Consider it a master class, if you will. It will cover the most common, and most esoteric, money laundering techniques in current use, as taught by one who used to practise them on a daily basis, and updated by my present investigations and observations of current trends and developments. This seminar has been created in response to many personal requests I have heard from World-Check users. 

The Office of Foreign Assets Controls, or OFAC, has just published its latest "name & shame" list of companies that it has fined for violations of Iranian and Cuban sanctions regulations.

World-Check users in the Middle East, please refer to our Seminar webpage for details of the four programmes that will be conducted in your area. You are cordially invited to reserve your seat for these informative presentations, all of which will feature several important speakers, including yours truly. Venues, dates, start and close time are all on the webpage.

The United States Attorney in Miami has filed a Second Joint Motion to Continue Sentencing in the Conspiracy case against banker Bradley Birkenfeld, stating that they need his cooperative assistance for an additional  90 days. The motion stated that his cooperation is still ongoing, and is focusing on activities in the United States and worldwide. The indictment alleges that he marketed to  a number of US taxpayers the advantages of Swiss and Liechtenstein banks for tax evasion, claiming that their banks secrecy laws were "unpenetrable."  One of the defendant's previous clients has already pled guilty to tax evasion. Birkenfeld's case was previously set for sentencing on 17 October, 2008.

The current campaign being conducted by the Government of Sri Lanka, against the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), the Tamil Tiger terrorist organisation, appears to have resulted in a number of important government military advances. It is reasonable to expect that terrorist financiers, mainly located in the Tamil Diaspora, will increase their efforts to extort money from expats, and increase their levels of participation in criminal activities, which they rely upon to acquire funds for weapons purchases. Prudent compliance officers will raise the level of awareness of their staff to potential Tamil Tiger terrorist financing operations, should their client base include a significant number of Tamil customers, or suppliers of weapons, ammunition and military equipment, including dual-use products.

The arrest of a Southfield, Michigan jeweller for allegedly laundering the proceeds of crime by accepting large amounts of cash, in exchange for expensive jewellery, demonstrates that narcotics traffickers, and their money laundering facilitators, continue to rely heavily upon precious gems and jewellery to convert their illicit cash into items of value. The weekly published DEA and FBI listings of seized property now overwhelmingly consist of jewellery that the US government then seeks to forfeit through judicial proceedings. Are your jeweller clients in full compliance with anti-money laundering regulations, and have you visited their places of business to confirm that their AML programmes are actually being employed each day?

Compliance officers working outside the United States should routinely verify the ZIP (stands for Zone Improvement Plan) code given by US residents opening accounts as part of their personal information. You may know this term in your country as postal code*. An invalid ZIP code on a new account application is a red flag, indicating that you may have been given false information, and the entire address may be bogus. FinCEN has a table that you can use to validate the first three digits for compliance purposes. It should always be a part of your customer identification programme.

If you are just getting back to work after the summer holidays, Confessions of a Money Launderer has also returned from an hiatus, effective as of last week. You are now two chapters behind in your reading of that unusual series. Catch up now, the third new chapter will be out next weekend, detailing what it was like for a former money launderer to be a compliance officer, and to catch the bad guys in real-time.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC, has just released its Quarterly Report of Licensing Activities, pursuant to the Trade Sanctions Reform & Export Enhancement Act of 2000. This information may be useful to you.

The Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, James Freis, discusses the intersection between AML and anti-fraud programmes on the FinCEN website. Readers whose responsibilities overlap may find this material of topical interest.