Much of the revenue of environmental crimes committed in Colombia are being laundered in the United States, a financial crimes analyst told Colombia Reports.
Listen to the interview
Financial crime expert Julia Yansura of the FACT coalition said that a recent report showed that “quite a significant amount of illicit revenue” that comes from illegal mining and forestry is either laundered or reinvested in the United States.
“The US unfortunately attracts dirty funds, not just from the US but other neighboring countries and around the world,” according to Yansura.
The crime expert said that drug trafficking groups “are increasingly turning to environmental crime” because “it’s very lucrative, just like narcotics, but the risk of getting caught is a lot lower.”
If you’re caught with say some timber or some gold, it’s a lot more difficult for authorities to pinpoint that a crime has actually been committed.
Julia Yansura
Lax American legislation on money laundering and strong bank secrecy laws make environmental crimes a “low risk, high reward” business, according to Yansura.
“We point to specific weaknesses… with anonymous shell companies,” said the financial crime expert.
Until the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), which took force in January, money launderers could create shell companies without properly identifying themselves.
This allowed criminal organizations to create entire corporate structures that hide the beneficiary of laundered crime profits.
With the CTA, “Colombian authorities will be able to request information on the real owners in the US” that are suspected of environmental crimes in Colombia.
But even with this anti money-laundering legislation in place, foreign companies can still buy and sell real estate in the US without having to demonstrate the beneficiary of this activity, said Yansura.
The US has not had significant money-laundering controls over the real estate sector for many, many years and this has enabled a lot of money laundering linked to environmental crimes as well as other sorts of crimes.
Julia Yansura
In order to effectively combat money laundering, Yansura and the FACT coalition stressed the need to come up with legislation that would clean up the American real estate sector and allow for the investigation of law firms that are suspected of involvement in money laundering.
These two sectors are among the most prominent financial sponsors of American politicians’ electoral campaigns.
