Khadija Ismayilova, who has been jailed for her reporting on high-level
corruption, explains why the revelations matter.
Azerbaijan may not mean that much to you.
In the west it is perhaps best known as a plucky winner of the Eurovision song contest, or
maybe easy opponents in qualification for another international football
tournament. It has oil, a Caspian Sea coastline and 10 million people.
But there is another side.
Journalism
is a crime in my country – the numbers say it all: 10 out of 158 political
prisoners in Azerbaijan
are journalists. The last remaining independent news agency, Turan, stopped
work last week. Read More ...
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About 12kg of heroin and £530,000 cash have been found by police during raids at three properties in Merseyside, U.K. The drugs, which have an estimated street value of £1.2m, were discovered at an address in Thatto Heath, St Helens, on Friday along with £500,000. The remaining £30,000 was found in a car outside another property in Huyton. Two men, aged 52 and 56, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to supply class A drugs and money laundering, and are being questioned by police.
Read More ...
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COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 6 (Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence) - As the Islamic State (IS) loses its position in Mosul, Iraq, as well as egress points in Syria, so too begins the strategic withdrawal of Sunni militants and financial assets from the area, which presents a major new challenge to anti-money laundering officers. IS fighters will retreat through human smuggling networks to other countries. The group's illicit proceeds, which total tens of billions of dollars, are derived from plundering banks, siphoning and trafficking of black market oil, kidnapping for ransom, human trafficking, organ trafficking, and stolen antiquities, according to Western governments and analysts. Read More ...
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Young men who leave their homes to fight for terrorist groups in Syria mainly come from disadvantaged backgrounds, have low levels of education and “lack any basic understanding of the true meaning of jihad or even the Islamic faith”, according to a new report. A study for the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism found that despite claiming to protect Muslims, most of the returned fighters were “novices” in their religion and some did not know how to pray properly. “Most saw their religion in terms of justice and injustice rather than in terms of piety and spirituality,” said the authors of the report, which was based on interviews with 43 people from 12 countries. Read More ...
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Children are being targeted by criminals to act as money mules, police have warned. The scam involves transferring stolen money through children's bank accounts to hide it from the authorities. According to The Times, the Met Police wrote to parents warning that pupils were being approached outside school gates and on social media. Det Ch Insp Gary Miles said the Met wanted to "make parents aware so they can discuss this with their children". In a statement, he added: "Children are getting accounts at a younger and younger age - 13-year-olds now have access to money that they didn't have before." Read More ...
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Football players with Real Madrid have a pretty good idea about where the best place to live in Madrid is: The La Finca luxury residential complex in the northwestern part of the Spanish city. The development, a 30-minute drive from the training grounds, consists of virtually identical, bunker-like luxury homes with landscaped gardens and pools. There is tight security at the entrance to the community, and there are small parks and ponds. The development is relatively shuttered from the outside world, except for those residents who jog on a path along the perimeter. Read More ...
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Four former Lloyds employees were among seven people jailed for 38 years for raiding bank accounts of wealthy clients to fund their luxury lifestyles. Bank workers Courtney Ayinbode, 29, Tajinder Galsinh, 35, Molly Jones, 24, and Benjamin Omoregie, 26, were all involved in the 'high-level and sophisticated' scam that took place between 2012 and 2013. The four insiders scoured the computer system for rarely-accessed accounts holding large sums of money before passing the details to the criminal gang. They also ordered new bank cards so impostors could pose as the customers and set up transfers of hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time. Read More ...
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LONDON — Global delegates and campaigners are gathering in Geneva this week for a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, known as CITES. The trade in ivory is high on the agenda as poaching continues to hit elephant populations across parts of Africa. Campaigners want tougher enforcement of regulations to tackle organized criminal gangs behind the trade. The United Nations estimates the illegal wildlife trade is worth $23 billion per year, with much of that value coming from ivory. Asia, and especially China, is by far the biggest market. The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency spent three years infiltrating one of the major smuggling syndicates shipping ivory from east African ports. Investigators identified the southern Chinese town of Shuidong as the major hub for poached ivory, they say 80 percent of ivory destined for China passes through the town. Read More ...
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Not everyone, it seems, is troubled by the migrant crisis engulfing Sicily. On one side, there are the ruthless criminal gangs making huge sums ferrying people across the Mediterranean – and now it emerges that the Mafia is exploiting the other end of the operation, attracted by the hundreds of millions in EU cash that has been given to Rome. From this fund, including money from British taxpayers, those sheltering and feeding migrants receive £31 per day per person. Mainly it goes to hoteliers, or those owning buildings equipped to house large numbers. Never slow to ‘wet their beaks’, the mob, according to prosecutors, decided it was too good an opportunity to ignore. Read More ...
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Criminal gangs are using online dating sites to steal hundreds of thousand of pounds from their victims, the boss of eHarmony has said. Fraudsters are using a technique known as catfishing, where a person uses a fake identity to attract those looking for genuine dates, to trick victims into sending them money. The culprits will often build trust with potential victims before begging them for money to help them with an emergency situation, for instance a mugging or medical treatment. In extreme cases, victims can part with hundreds of thousands of pounds. Read More ...
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£7m of ivory is found in frozen fish: Biggest haul in 30 years is seized in Hong Kong after being smuggled from Malaysia
- More than seven tons of ivory – worth £7million – have been seized in Hong Kong
- The seizure represent the deaths of hundreds of elephants, killed for their tusks
- The haul found in Hong Kong was hidden underneath frozen fish in a container
- Customs officials said the cargo came from Malaysia from a large smuggling ring Read More ...
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A drug baron's Aston Martin Virage supercar was sold at auction for £58,000 by detectives who smashed her multi-million pound network. Paula White, who masterminded a mail order trade of so-called 'legal highs' worth around £3m, was jailed for nine years in 2015. The luxury motor she once drove went under the hammer at a police-approved auction house. It was seized after her arrest by Titan, the north-west regional organised crime unit, and has now been sold off under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA). Items of her jewellery were also auctioned. Read More ...
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Fraudsters who conned NHS hospitals, councils and a government out of more than £12m have been sentenced. Ten conspirators were given sentences at Leicester Crown Court of up to 10 years in prison. In each case forged letters, emails or faxes were sent to the 22 targeted organisations, pretending to be from a legitimate firm already carrying out contract works. The biggest victim was the Guernsey government, which lost £2.6m. In one case, a £1.28m payment to build a mental health unit at Lincoln's St George's Hospital was diverted when NHS trust staff failed to check the new bank details supplied. Read More ...
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The U.K. government published the final anti-money laundering legislation that took effect June 26 and includes details on future risk updates and rules for due diligence and screening staff. The regime implements the European Union’s Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which places new reporting requirements on banks monitoring suspicious transactions to prevent the concealment of funds and stop the use of the financial system to fund terror attacks. Serious and organized crime costs Britain at least £24 billion ($30.5 billion) every year, the government said. The proceeds from criminal activity in the EU has been estimated at €110 billion (€123 billion) per year, corresponding to 1 percent of the EU’s GDP. Read More ...
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