Category / money laundering

by Mike Poverello

‘Flying out of Africa’, an essay on China -Africa relations

cina-africa-focac

The following article featured in BusinessLive (eEdition) on 25 July 2019. It is authored by John Grobler. The article was compiled with the financial support of Journalismfund.eu’s Money Trail grant programme. 

Chinese ‘lying money’, or fei qian, is an ancient form of value exchange. But its modern incarnation is blamed for stripping Africa of its resources.

The secret of Chinese commercial success in Africa, as suggested by an 18-month investigation into the drugs-for-abalone and rosewood trade and a major Namibian tax fraud case, is an ancient system that not only allows African countries to be robbed of taxes, but also plays a part in financing the global $270bn-a-year wildlife contraband trade.

Fei qian, or “flying money”, dates back about 1,200 years, to the Tang Dynasty in China. In its simplest modern incarnation, it is a low-cost and trusted method of remitting money, much like the Islamic hawala system. For example, a person who wants to send funds to a recipient in Africa will pay a fei qian broker in China. For a commission, the broker will arrange that a counterpart in Africa pays the recipient, again for a commission. The two fei qian brokers later settle their account through, for example, the transfer of commodities of equivalent value — but also sometimes through less salubrious methods such as transfer mispricing or invoice manipulation.

In practice, the system relies on the systematic underinvoicing of Chinese imports into Africa and a seamless chain of payments system in which accounts are settled through the transfer of high-end — and often illicit — goods such as abalone, rosewood, rhino horn and ivory. In brief: goods are undervalued on their import documentation; they are then sold for cash; and that undeclared cash is subsequently channelled into high-end commodities that are remitted to China to balance the fei qian books.

“The trick behind fei qian is that the money never actually leaves China,” says a former Singaporean finance expert, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s just the commodities that get moved around” as part of a longer payment chain among the Chinese diaspora.

Unlike barter trade, fei qian is not a straight swap; it is an exchange in stored value that leaves no paper trail, except in the books of the fei qian operators themselves. What makes the system even more impenetrable, the investigation has found, is that these operators mostly seem to be older, well-established women working in a closed network of mutually trusted contacts.

This nexus, and lack of paper trail, means fei qian is largely invisible. But it occasionally appears as a gaping hole in a country’s balance of payments account with China – as Namibia has discovered in an ongoing import-tax fraud investigation.

Jack Huang, a business associate of President Hage Geingob, and Laurentius Julius, a former Walvis Bay customs official and now a customs clearing agent, are among eight suspects facing 3,215 charges of fraud and money laundering in the Windhoek high court. Continue reading →

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by Mike Poverello

South Africa severely affected by commodity trade misinvoicing

Raw-gold-619x413Global Trade Review reports that trade mis-invoicing is costing some developing countries two-thirds of the value of certain commodity exports.

New data gleaned from two decades of export figures emphasises the tens of billions of dollars being lost from the global economy to the under-invoicing of commodities from Africa and South America.

Between 2000 and 2014, 67% of the value of total gold exports were lost from South Africa through under-invoicing – when an invoice states a price as a lower value than is actually being paid.

Also read Maya Forestater’s blog post Misinvoicing or misunderstanding? for an alternative explanation regarding the UN’s claims in its recent report Trade Misinvoicing in Primary Commodities in Developing Countries.

This is often done to avoid paying taxes and is one of the most common methods of trade-based money laundering. The total loss in this particular commodity export amounts to US$78.2bn. More than half of this is lost on the trade of gold between South Africa and India.

From 1996 to 2014, the mis-invoicing of oil exports from Nigeria to the US was worth US$69.8bn. This is the equivalent value of one-quarter of all oil exports to the US.

The data from the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) shows that in the 20 years from 1995, more than half of Zambia’s total copper exports fell victim to misinvoicing, with US$28.9bn-worth not showing up on the books of Switzerland, the primary market.

From 1990 to 2014, Chile lost US$16bn in potential taxable revenue in the copper trade to the Netherlands, while the Netherlands did not record US$5bn in cocoa exports from Côte d’Ivoire between 1995 and 2015.

This is the first large-scale analyses of under-invoicing for specific commodities and countries,  despite the fact that the practice has been so rife for decades.

More awareness has been raised to the practice in recent years – in no small part due to the work done by not-for-profit organisations such as Global Financial Integrity (GFI) – but the lack of resources allocated to its eradication in much of the world, coupled with the culpability of many officials around the world, means that little progress has been made.

There is still no global standard against trade-based money laundering as there is against, for instance, sanctions breaching. The fact that it pre-dates most formal financial systems also means that any measures taken to stop it are difficult to enforce.

“When we talk about illicit financial flows we’re always talking about curtailing it, because there’s not going to be any situation in which any set of policies is going to entirely limit criminal behaviour. We have many, many laws on the books and folks break them all the time. But if you can make it as difficult as possible for folks to engage in this kind of thing, you’re doing what you’re supposed to do it,” Liz Confalone, policy counsel at GFI tells GTR.

The report also brings to attention the practice of over-invoicing – whereby the price of a good is fraudulently increased, allowing the exit of illegal money from an economy. Often, this money is connected to the narcotics trade, or to other criminal activity.

The UNCTAD report reads: “Puzzling results also emerge at the trading partner level. Trade with the Netherlands presents a peculiar case, with systematic and substantial export over-invoicing. It appears that primary commodities exported to the Netherlands never dock in the Netherlands.

“The question is whether this is the outcome of smuggling or incorrect reporting of the residence of the buyers. Answering this question may require an investigation at the company level.”

The authors call on a three-pronged attack on trade mis-invoicing, encompassing greater government scrutiny of particular commodity sales, an improvement in trade statistics and greater transparency in certain jurisdictions.

They write: “The results from this study highlight the need for an investigation into the role of transnational corporations involved in the exploitation, export and import of commodities, as well as the role of secrecy jurisdictions in facilitating trade mis-invoicing.

“Such an investigation may shed light on the mechanisms of export over-invoicing and import smuggling. Enhanced transparency in global trade is indispensable, especially through co-ordinated enforcement of the rules on country-by-country reporting by TNCs at the global level.”

Speaking to GTR recently, Jolyon Ellwood-Russell, a Hong Kong-based trade finance partner at law firm Simmons & Simmons, called for more joined-up thinking on an intergovernmental level if the problem is to be tackled.

Praising moves by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Monetary Authority of Singapore to clamp down on trade-based money laundering, he said: “The issue is that the techniques and methods are very complex and don’t necessarily fit into those existing countermeasure programmes. Both banks and regulators could probably benefit from a better understanding of trade finance structures and how they are used in trade-based money laundering.” Source: Global Trade Review

by Mike Poverello

War Against Ivory Smuggling

Smuggled Ivory

In January 2014, while x-raying a Vietnam-bound container declared to hold cashews, Togolese port authorities saw something strange: ivory. Eventually, more than four tons was found, Africa’s largest seizure since the global ivory trade ban took effect in 1990. [Photo: Brent Stirton, National Geographic]

Last year, one of Kenya’s most adored elephants, Satao, was killed for his ivory. Poachers shot the bull elephant with a poisoned arrow in Tsavo East National Park, waited for him to die a painful death, and then hacked off his face to remove his massive tusks.

Poachers continue to kill an estimated 30,000 elephants a year, one every 15 minutes, fueled to a large extent by China’s love of ivory. Thirty-five years ago, there were 1.2 million elephants in Africa; now around 500,000 remain.

A recent documentary, 101 East, released by Al Jazeera, traces the poaching of elephants and smuggling of ivory from Tanzania’s port of Dar es Salaam through the port of Zanzibar to Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Hong Kong is one of the busiest ports in the world. It handled nearly 200,000 vessels last year and is a key transit hub for smugglers transporting ivory from Africa to China. Between 2000 and 2014, customs officials seized around 33 tons of ivory, taken from an estimated 11,000 elephants.

With the huge challenge faced by customs and other law enforcement agencies in West Africa, wildlife crime is on the rise. Regional traffickers and organized crime groups are exploiting weak, ineffective and inconsistent port controls throughout the region.

U.N. Action in Africa
To address the issue, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) organized a workshop in Accra, Ghana, from August 25 to 27 August, and in Dakar, Senegal, from August 31 to September 2. The objective was to provide training for national law enforcement agencies to better fight wildlife crime through the control of maritime containers. The workshop was led by trainers and experts from UNODC, the World Customs Organization (WCO) and the CITES Management Authority.

The Container Control Programme has been developed jointly by UNODC and WCO to assist governments to create sustainable enforcement structures in selected sea and dry ports to minimize the risk of shipping containers being exploited for illicit drug trafficking and other transnational organized crime. The implementation of the program is an opportunity for UNODC to work with governments in establishing a unit dedicated to targeting and inspecting high-risk containers.

UNODC, in partnership with WCO, delivers basic training programs and provides technical and office equipment. For example, the equipment connects the units to the WCO’s ContainerCOMM – a restricted branch of the Customs Enforcement Network dedicated to sharing information worldwide on the use of containers for illicit trafficking.
Sustainability.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon argues: “Illegal wildlife trade undermines the rule of law, degrades ecosystems and severely hampers the efforts of rural communities striving to sustainably manage their natural resources.”

Wildlife trade is a transnational organized crime that raises profits of about $19 billion annually. In addition, it is often linked to other crimes such as arms trafficking, drug trafficking, corruption, money-laundering and terrorism – that can deprive developing economies of billions of dollars in lost revenues.

Shipping
It’s hardly surprising that many of the big ivory seizures made in recent years have been detected in shipping containers, says Dr. Richard Thomas, Global Communications Coordinator for the environmental organization TRAFFIC. “Partly that’s due to the sheer quantity of ivory being moved (the largest-ever ivory seizure was 7.1 tons) – which from a practical and cost point of view makes sea carriage more attractive than air carriage.

“Also in the smugglers’ favor is the huge numbers of containers moved by sea. Some of the big ports in Asia deal with literally thousands of containers per day. Obviously it’s not practical or feasible to inspect each and every one, and that’s something the organized criminal gangs behind the trafficking rely upon.”

There’s lots of issues to be dealt with, says Thomas: For example, even when an enforcement agency makes a seizure, it’s not easy to find out who actually booked the passage for the container and who knew precisely what was in it and actually put it there. “That’s one area where transport companies can collaborate with enforcement agencies to assist follow-up enquiries. Obviously companies have records of where the container is headed too, obviously key information for follow-up actions,” says Thomas.

TRAFFIC recently ran a workshop in Bangkok under the auspices of the Wildlife Trafficking Response, Assessment and Priority Setting (Wildlife TRAPS) project, targeting the movement of illicit wildlife cargoes across borders.

“The transport industry can serve as the eyes and ears of enforcement agencies as part of a global collaboration to eliminate the poaching and trafficking of illegal wildlife commodities,” said Nick Ahlers, Leader of TRAFFIC’s Wildlife TRAPS project.

“To be successful, the entire logistics sector needs to be part of a united push to eliminate wildlife trafficking from supply chains. In particular, we would welcome participation from major shipping lines and the cargo and baggage-handling sector.”

If nothing is done to stop the ivory trade, Africa’s wild elephants could be gone in a few decades. Source: Reuters.

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