Photo: PixabayFor the first time in several years, the annual report of the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering did not single out investing money of unknown origin in real estate as a way of money laundering in Serbia, nor as a challenge in the fight against money laundering.
In the latest Annual Report of the Administration for 2021, in the usual chapters dedicated to typologies of money laundering and trends, construction activity and illegal construction are not mentioned anywhere, unlike the reports from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.
In these earlier reports, the Administration has expressed concern about the trend of investing money of unknown origin, as well as organized crime or individual criminals, in housing construction or real estate.
This year's report mentions the misuse of payment platforms as common typologies with the intention of concealing the real origin of the money and the connection between the persons making the transfers.
The management estimates that IT services are very often used to cover up illegally acquired money.
Money of illegal origin is transferred in significant amounts from the account of a legal entity abroad on the basis of IT services for the benefit of legal entities in Serbia. Legal entities in Serbia then pay these funds to individuals as salaries. The persons keep a part for themselves and return the larger part in cash to the organizers of this entire scheme, the Management explains, kamatica.com reports.
The list of typologies of money laundering also includes car trade. Used cars and imports have been marked in previous years as well.
The challenge for the hypothetical threat of money laundering in the near future is the trade in cryptocurrencies (virtual currencies), which is not negligible in Serbia.
As a reminder, bitcoin is among the most popular cryptocurrencies because it has the largest marketcap.
Technological development enables the creation of countless cryptocurrencies and it is difficult to predict what will come out of it in terms of their purpose, usefulness and justification of existence, the Administration estimates.
"The financial sector is recording balances (usually through credit cards) of increasing participation of many players in this field. Given the considerable anonymity in the chain of trading and possession of virtual wallets, this is also an enticing opportunity for criminal organizations or criminals to use this rather undefined and unregulated emerging industry for their criminal activities and money laundering. We can say for sure that in the near future there will be many challenges and necessary actions to establish good prevention and control of the cryptocurrency sector, and above all it means defining and identifying business owners, participants in trading, monitoring, and controlling cash flows. are subject to the conversion of money into cryptocurrencies and vice versa ", analysts of the Administration estimate.
Steam is washed through the so-called. transit transactions in international payment transactions and through boiler companies. This means that the organizing company directs money abroad to a domestic legal entity, usually on the basis of services, which is transferred immediately on the same day, also on the basis of invoiced services to other companies located in many countries, often offshore zones.
When it comes to experiences in Serbia, which attracts special attention, these are transfers of several hundred million euros, which are thus transferred from abroad to domestic companies (water heaters - have no real purpose of domicile business) and are quickly transferred to new users in abroad", points out the Administration.
What is worrying is that the money is "mixed", more precisely which is "clean" in relation to "dirty" money, and there is doubt about the real purpose of the work, where it is usually stated that the purpose of transferring so much money - computer services and programming services.
The Administration estimates that more and more new products are being created on IT platforms, especially in the services segment, especially the banking and factoring sectors. In these cases, the holder - creator of the e-business platform and also the obligor, "inadequate identification of clients", according to the Law may cause insufficient knowledge of client business, as well as speed of operations and number of access clients. The management estimates that regulators and supervisory bodies will have to make an effort to interpret and regulate the "new products" thus created, in order to support the development of the digital economy, and at the same time to make it similar in the context of legislation.
Source: kamatica.com
