How can a regular bank clerk at Danske Bank in Estonia, uncover a $230 billion money laundering operation you ask? Well, all it took was a simple search on the British company register, Companies House. What he found? A ‘dormant’ UK company (a company which should not be engaging in a single transaction) that flushed up to 20 MILLION USD through ‘his’ bank, PER DAY! This wasn’t just a one-off either, there were many many more…
Shocker? Yes! Especially as, I’m sure you have not failed to notice, you as the average Joe, are subjected to an ever increasing avalanche of AML/KYC regulations, making you seriously wonder whether perhaps you really are a crook after all.
Today, with almost every silly little business having to assign an ‘AML Compliance Officer’, one wonders what the compliance department at Danske Bank was doing from 2007 all the way up to 2015. Or, is that where the problem lies, as with this reversal of ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’, with Metropolitan anti-corruption officers being investigated for corruption themselves? Anyway, watch and be amazed how, despite the complete lack of sophistication and imagination, this money laundering scheme yielded big-time for it’s beneficiaries.