Laundering of dirty money: Fight to the source

To stop the laundering of illicit proceeds, it is necessary to deal with their sources, and not with machinery. This opinion was exclusively for UBR. UA economist expressed InvestGroup "Art Capital" Oleg Iwaniec. "In the Ukrainian realities is crucial to distinguish between such concepts as" illegal profits "and" unofficial returns. " Under the "illegal proceeds" refers to income derived from the explicitly criminal activities, are recognized as such, not only in Ukraine but also in most civilized countries. In particular, we are talking about terrorism, illegal arms trade, drug trafficking. Informal income - it is income earned from legitimate from the standpoint of the Criminal Code, the goods and services, which, however, were utaeny from the Internal Revenue Service. Getting the illegal income is incomparably more serious crime than receiving informal income, but the mechanisms of money laundering in both cases are similar enough "- said Oleg Iwaniec. According to him, the important point is that illegal income - is a crime under international law, and informal - no, that is, failure to pay taxes in one country is not considered a crime in another, whereas the criminal offenses - are recognized. "The Strategy of counteracting legalization of proceeds from crime, adopted by the Cabinet, is precisely the struggle with illegal income. However, due to the widespread practice of informal income, the fight against illegal considerably more complicated. Actually implement such a strategy is possible only together with a strategy to combat crime by criminals, so how to deal directly with the mechanisms of money laundering is extremely difficult, "- says Iwaniec. As previously reported, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved a five-year strategy for combating the legalization of proceeds from crime. In already in place in Ukraine, measures such as anti-conversion centers and fictitious companies, and operations through offshore zones, the government intends to toughen the penalties for manipulating the stock market and the illegal use of insider information. Relevant issues are the development of mechanisms to identify conversion centers and businesses with signs fictitious, and analysis of foreign economic operations by entities via offshore zone; avoiding the use of cash and an increase in non-cash transactions, classification of customers and operations risk-based system. Among other things, the government proposes to introduce criminal liability for manipulation in the stock market and increased penalties for illegal use of insider information . These crimes should qualify as a predicate (wrongful acts, preceded by a money-laundering), as required by the Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the "dirty" money. In addition, all predicate crimes Cabinet proposes to distribute the measures to confiscate assets or property. Implementation of these proposals will allow Ukraine to become a "partner for the international community in countering the legalization of" dirty "money and improve investment attractiveness.