Greentube faces regulatory action
In this week’s KYC360 AML roundup: Greentube faces regulatory action, calls to investigate UK care home funding, Lloyds Banking Group and London City police join forces to fight fraud and David Prosser investigates money mules.
A recent article published by The Guardian dives into how London has become a hotspot for kleptocracy. A massive factor in this popularity is the secrecy of the financial system. Beneficial ownership appears to be a large issue with 335,000 of companies listed with Companies House not revealing their beneficial owners. Most shockingly, 4000 beneficial owners belong to children aged two or under.
Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has called for the competition watchdog to investigate the finances of some the largest UK’s care homes. Two of the biggest care groups, Care UK and HC-One are both owned through private equity and concerns have raised at how debt the companies carry. HC-One has been found to have over 80 companies in its network, with the function of some them being questioned especially with several at the top sitting in the Cayman Islands – a well known tax haven.
UK Police have joined forces Lloyds Banking Group to test a new scheme that will use the proceeds of crime to invest in projects that fight against fraud and support victims. The bank announced this week that the first part of the frozen money amounts to around £7 million. The money has been captured by the bank’s specialist money mule hunting team.
Money laundering is often a sophisticated crime pursued through complex transactions across multiple financial systems; but it may also rely on much simpler techniques – a Europol investigation into money mules has just concluded with the arrest of more than 1,800 individuals. David Prosser investigates how money mules are very much a global problem and the challenges countries face in tackling this issue.
In the most recent episode of our popular podcast, the KYC Talk Show, host Stephen Platt was joined by Mike Parker, former US federal prosecutor and money laundering & economic sanctions expert, to discuss how crucial sanctions are in the fight against financial crime.
Listen to the episode here or find it where you usually listen to podcasts.
The Internal Consortium of Investigative Journalists has published data from on the beneficial owners of over 15,000 companies, trusts, foundations and other entities from the Pandora Papers investigation. The data comes from two of the fourteen service providers that made up the leak, with more data from the other service providers coming in 2022.
Greentube Alderney has been ordered to pay £685,000 after the UK Gambling Commission’s investigation into the company found money laundering and social responsibility failures. The investigation found that the company failed to conduct adequate assessments of the risk of money laundering as well as not having implemented polices to prevent money laundering. You can read the full statement here.