PETALING JAYA: Malaysian police are working with their counterparts in
other countries to curb a global currency exchange that ran a US$6bil
(RM18bil) cyber money-laundering operation.
Source from (The Malaysian Insider): http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2013/5/30/nation/13174253&sec=nation
Published: May 30, 2013
Special Task Force (Operations and Counter Terrorism) director Commissioner Datuk Mohamad Fuzi Harun said police had been monitoring the illegal activity for two years with the help of Bank Negara.
“We are aware of the illegal operation, which also uses unlicensed
money exchangers to avoid any paper trail,” he said yesterday.
He
was commenting on a report in the New York Times, which named the
currency exchange called Liberty Reserve, believed to be the world’s
largest cyber money-laundering case.
The report said Liberty
Reserve did not take or make cash payments directly but used “third
party exchangers” that tended to be unlicensed money-transmitting
businesses concentrated in Malaysia, Russia, Nigeria and Vietnam.
Comm Mohamad Fuzi explained that investigations were ongoing despite the initial outcome which seemed less than encouraging.
“It is hard to gather credible evidence on such trans-border crime.
“However,
we have been tracking the money trail, communicating with our
counterparts in other countries on a daily basis,” he said.
He
explained that police were using the Anti-Money Laundering and
Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001 to go after these syndicates.
“It is a global syndicate, thus it takes time to bring it down,” he said.
The
New York Times report, citing American law enforcement officers, said
Liberty Reserve, which was based in the United States but operated well
beyond the country’s borders as well as traditional international
banking regulations, was responsible for laundering billions of dollars
over the past seven years, conducting 55 million transactions that
involved millions of customers around the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment