Vision & Mission
Sustainable Development Goal 16
Anti-money Laundering
Completing KYC processes usually costs banks around USD 62 million yearly
Lead to money laundering
Money Laundering takes up about 1.2% of the EU´s total GDP
Mexican Drug Cartels launder at least USD 9 billion each year (5% of the country’s GDP)
Anti-money Laundering
When dirty money stemming from criminality such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, violence and embezzlement is successfully laundered by criminals it enters the economy in the guise of legitimate businesses or assets. According to figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, global money laundering accounts for anywhere between $800 billion and 2 trillion US dollars every year. Human and drug trafficking alone account for $500 billion in laundered money. Our current financial system is outdated and money easily becomes untraceable. AML regulations implemented to fight crime are very important, yet not easy to comply with, resulting in more barriers and time spent, for accessing financial services.
Crime and corruption are harmful to economic growth and this is particularly damaging to developing economies. Most recently we witnessed the Money Laundering scandal in Estonia involving Danske Bank, but to get a clearer picture of the many forms this kind of crime can take, let us imagine a huge building company offering its services to several governments offering to build crucial infrastructure such as bridges, metro lines etc that never become a reality. This is exactly what happened with Grupo Odebrecht, Latin America´s largest construction conglomerate in a scandal where dozens of companies acknowledged paying bribes to politicians and officials in exchange for contracts.
Money Laundering acts as a virus that infects healthy economies and destroys vulnerable ones. Launderers usually channel illegal funds through investment instruments, or they may simply perform wire transfers through a series of accounts at various banks around the globe.
Methods vary from the simple purchase of luxury items to more-sophisticated techniques involving the transfer of the money through a transnational network of banks and other financial institutions.
Countries worldwide have drafted and implemented regulations against money laundering, and global organisations like the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) supervise the operations of the entire global finance industry.
However, Money Laundering remains hard to track mainly because the financial system is siloed and the venues for detection are still largely performed manually. Whereas, criminals become more creative and device new sophisticated ways for laundering illicit funds, regulations take time to adapt and implement.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Italian mafia bosses allegedly purchased ‘Laundromats‘ to mix illegal profits from criminal activities with legal legitimate business sales from the ‘Laundromats‘.
FULLY AUTOMATED PROTOCOLS
Nowadays, banks mostly rely on manual efforts for their Anti-money Laundering compliance but adding more human resources is not a long-term solution. With legacy systems, the costs of managing the process to read, analyse, and implement the changes in operations will only increase over time.
ARYZE serves as a regulated cloud–banking software interlinked with blockchain technology. Enhancing transparency and thus significantly reducing corruption and crime related to money laundering.
Our streamlined KYC/KYB/KYT processes allow new clients to be onboarded in hours, rather than the weeks it takes traditional banks, saving companies time and money and allowing them to focus on their business without going through the hassle of lengthy processes.
Blockchain analysis is a highly effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool.
How we regulate money laundering
The world’s anti-money laundering (AML) regime is evolving at a rapid pace in the fight against financial crime. A Refinitiv webinar has examined an important year for AML regulation, as well as the technology helping to streamline compliance.
Money laundering is a crime that many people consider irrelevant to them. If a problem at all, they consider it a problem only for banks. That is far from true. Money laundering has massive effects not only on financial institutions, but also on governments, industries, economies and all individuals.
