The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in partnership with the Wolfsberg Group and the Bankers Association for Finance Trade (BAFT) has launched a short awareness video in an effort to shed light on trade-based money laundering (TBML).

The partnership, which sets guidelines and offers recommendations for governments and the private sector to more effectively combat what it describes as “this international challenge”, says TBML is often considered one of the least understood financial crimes.

Financial crime focus

The video supplements the three organisations’ 2017 Trade Finance Principles, which aim to address the due diligence required by global and regional financial institutions of all sizes in the financing of international trade.

The 2017 paper also includes recommendations on how governments, banks and other trade finance stakeholders can better work together to counter the threat of financial crime.

Organised crime

Executive director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, said he “welcome[s] this video as a useful tool to raise awareness about this important issue.”

“Trade-based money laundering is [not only] a highly effective way of mixing large volumes of criminal proceeds with legitimate funds, but also of moving them outside of the country of activity within business transactions,” he added.

Wainwright also said TBML is very attractive to organised crime groups and very hard to identify and investigate because of its transnational nature and complexity.

The video released by the partnership can be found here.

Categories: Trade Based Financial crimes News