Season 10, Episode 5: How Mekong region organized crime built a global cryptocurrency money laundering network Compliance Clarified – a podcast by Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence

Industrial scale money laundering originating in Southeast Asia's Mekong region has gone global. It's the infrastructure that handles the proceeds of pig butchering scams, child pornography, trade in human body parts, illegal gambling, drug trafficking and people trafficking. Cross-border crime networks fueled by cryptocurrency is linking the world's most dangerous criminals and allowing them to scale up and automate money laundering. This activity is increasingly linked to terrorist financing as well as sanctions evasion.
In this episode Helen Chan, Regulatory Intelligence expert joins Rachel Wolcott, senior editor to discuss the scale and scope of crypto money-laundering-as-a-service and its origins in Southeast Asia's gambling industry. Helen and Rachel talk listeners through how crypto exchanges may be using regulatory arbitrage to get licensed, which in turn can open the door to organized crime groups. To date China and the U.S. have mounted the strongest regulatory and enforcement response, while other jurisdictions like the UK and the European Union seem to be operating on an outdated assumption that crypto money laundering is low risk.

Links:
UN Office on Drugs and Crime report: Casinos, Money Laundering, Underground Banking and Transnational Organized Crime in East and Southeast Asia: A hidden and accelerating threat: https://www.unodc.org/roseap/uploads/documents/Publications/2024/Casino_Underground_Banking_Report_2024.pdf

ANALYSIS: Highspeed wash: how organized crime's global crypto, gambling networks automated money laundering
Inside paywall: http://go-ri.tr.com/09c1Ja
Outside paywall https://regintel-content.thomsonreuters.com/document/I7F1F59A0CF4811EE95DBBC91F36F90D4

KYC: Firms marketing super-fast customer onboarding vulnerable to account-opening, mule attacks: https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/investigation-fraud-and-risk/kyc-update-customer-on-boarding/

IMPACT ANALYSIS: Fake regulators and VATPs surface on new fraud front in Hong Kong: http://go-ri.tr.com/VYGpP2

COLUMN: China’s crackdown on "pig butchering" invites domestic crypto scrutiny: http://go-ri.tr.com/kRawN7

Reuters report on Alvin Chau, Macao gambling tycoon: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/macau-court-sentences-junket-mogul-18-years-jail-tvb-2023-01-18/

Connecting Chinese and American Scam Victims: https://www.chainargos.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Connecting-Chinese-and-American-Scam-Victims-9-January-2024.pdf

Crypto exchange HTX's Seychelles strike off complicates asset recovery efforts, increases compliance risk for partner firms: http://go-ri.tr.com/htRT2h https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7118129918885961729/

Contact us:
Helen.Chan@thomsonreuters.com
Rachel.wolcott@thomsonreuters.com


Compliance Clarified is a podcast from Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence.
Listen to wide-ranging, insightful discussions on all things compliance for financial services firms. We delve into the hot topics of the day, the challenges faced and offer up practical ideas for emerging good practice. We de-mystify regulation and explore the art, as well as the science, of the ever-expanding role of the compliance officer.  Enforcements, digital transformation, regulatory change, governance, culture, conduct risk – anything and everything impacting the compliance function is up for discussion.