What is Trade-Based Money Laundering?
Trade-Based Money Laundering (TBML) exploits international trade and trade finance systems for laundering illicit proceeds. It involves a series of schemes for TBML, including falsifying invoices, commodity misclassification, forming shell companies, forging trade documents, etc., for illegally moving funds across the continents.
Currently, international financial institutions estimate $2 trillion worth of trade, out of around $20 trillion, to get laundered annually in the form of Trade-Based Money Laundering. Customs fraud is mainly synonymous with Trade-Based Money Laundering. Customs manipulations like price, quantity, and quality alterations in the import/export of the goods are involved in the TBML of illicit bulk cash across nations. This blog sheds light on the TBML methodologies, TBML red-flag indicators, and its regulatory compliance policies.
Widespread TBML Methodologies Exploited by Money Launderers
Over Invoicing, Under Invoicing – When an exporter receives more money than the value of goods sold to an importer, it’s over-invoicing. On the other side, when an importer receives more money while selling the goods in the local market after buying them at an unvalued price from an exporter, it’s under-invoicing. Both the instances trigger an extra value transferred via trade between the parties as money laundering.
Multiple Invoicing or Carousel Transactions – A money launderer misuses the legal system to produce multiple invoices for the same shipment by complicating the payments with more than one financial institution. It’s a typical multiple-invoicing method for legitimizing one payment more than once and integrating illicit money into the financial system.
Over Shipment, Under Shipment – The trade involves misrepresenting the number of goods; the over and understatement of items give the money launderers a scope to process excessive payments of illicit money.
Inferior Shipment – It involves exporting cheaper quality goods with falsified invoices and submitting bills for relatively costly goods to customs.
Front Fake Commodities – The shipment of commodities does not match with the business classification, and the trade is made to transfer the illicit money value rather than the actual goods.
Shell Companies – Offshore companies, acting as front or shell companies for organizations involved in sending excessive funds across the continents. For years, law-breakers have preferred shell companies as camouflage to facilitate TBML activities. At times, it may so happen that established companies make their foray into an entirely distinct market segment to divert their income via shell operations.
Phantom Shipment – There may be no shipment at times, and the invoices are still generated and bills passed in the customs.
Major TBML Red-Flag Checks for Customs and Financial Institutions
A joint effort of Egmont Group and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to combat the worldwide TBML activities has set-forth imperative red-flag checks on this trade-based financial crime.
Common Anomalies – International trade-related activities involve a lot of paperwork. All the more challenging is that the financial institutions are only exposed to the official documents and not the commodities in trade. So, on the face of it, common TBML red flags involve finding anomalies in product pricing, irregular product description, and price matching with the product quantity and quality standards.
Unnatural Transactions – Financial institutions must keep a regular Transaction Monitoring on the trade activities of the parties involved; the monitoring includes the nature of transactions, business locations, background checks, the characteristics of the traded goods, etc. Unusual transactions also consist of substantial below-threshold cash payments and inexplicable third-party payments.
High-Risk Jurisdictions – Businesses set up in jurisdictions with weak AML-CFT regulations, suspicious addresses, with an indistinct online presence. All the mentioned red flags give a clear indication of out-of-sync business activity. Such entities generally have unstructured business operations with no proper payroll, marketing, advertisement, or accounting reports.
Free-Trade-Zones (FTZs) – The customs-free nature for bringing liberalization in global economic activities has paved the way for acceleration in the TBML activities as criminals are continually exploiting the eased-up trade barriers in around 3500 ports worldwide. Trade activities at the FTZs are more vulnerable to being misused for laundering money.
How Regulated Institutions Must Remain AML-CFT Complaint
Risk-Based Model – Financial Institutions (FI) must follow regulatory Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and keep their Know-Your-Customer (KYC) records updated. It is on the part of the FI to conduct proactive Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) on the potential high-risk clients with stringent identity checks and transaction monitoring. In addition, the records must be kept updated and presented to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) authorities on suspecting unusual trade activities.
Transaction Monitoring – The financial institutions that handle large trade-related activities must monitor their clients in real-time. All Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) and Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) must put the financial authorities to alarm. A series of SARs and STRs trade datasets also help establish emerging TBML typologies for predictive analysis.
AI-Based Machine Learning Algorithms – All leading financial institutions utilize the best-in-class data analytics technology to monitor transactions. The Artificial Intelligence-based rule engine algorithms instantly trigger unusual events to discover trade-related suspicious activities occurring across the businesses in real-time.
Know-Your-Business (KYB) – The financial and other regulated institutions must regularly check on the businesses they are doing business with. Know-Your-Business (KYB) involves business identity verifications for genuine business onboarding. At the same time, the regulated financial institutions must authenticate the Ultimate Beneficial Ownership (UBO) for both individuals and businesses involved in trade transactions.
Sanctions, PEPs and Adverse Media – The compliance officers must screen businesses and individuals against Sanctions and PEP lists. In addition, adverse news about the owners and entities across the press and online media indicates brewing illicit activities somewhere down the line.
Conclusion
Given the scope plus volume of today’s trade, masking illicit gains with trade-based activities has become easier for the launderers. Furthermore, there are fewer initiatives taken in the TBML AML-CFT methods than in other money laundering methods. It has been believed that the global trade system is so complex – involving many deterrents and regulatory sluggishness – that it has made laundering money for criminals and terrorists more convenient via global merchandising activities.
The unrestrained threat of Trade-Based Money Laundering has given this financial crime an Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) risk status, which is otherwise mostly used for cybercrimes. If you are a financial or regulated institution seeking AI-Based client behavior tracking, document verification, and suspicious transaction reporting solutions to fulfil your business compliance, schedule a call with the IDMerit AML solution advisor. We offer best-in-class Fraud Protection and KYC-KYB Compliance solutions to businesses worldwide.
