Now, an investigation by ICIJ and its partners using the leaked Pandora Papers files reveals in detail how financial services providers across Panama, Andorra and Spain facilitated the family’s lucrative investments, rarely questioning the origin of their funds.
Michele Riccardi, an expert in organized crime and money laundering, told ICIJ that the Tamburellos managed their wealth like a typical family office, exploiting some financial services providers’ “mix of complicity and complete lack of awareness.”
The family, he says, mostly chose banks in jurisdictions outside European anti-money laundering regimes and invested heavily in the poorly regulated property sector.
“I was not surprised when I saw each jurisdiction being misused for exactly the vulnerability they have,” Riccardi said. Read more here.
SWEDBANK SETTLES PANAMA PAPERS CASE
Swedbank agreed to pay a $50 million fine to New York’s state financial regulator to settle a long-running money laundering case tied to the Panama Papers. The probe looked into the bank’s anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing controls, and its disclosures to regulators between 2007 and 2019, according to a statement by the Swedish bank.
CRYPTO FLAGGED BY CANADIAN INTEL
An internal report obtained by ICIJ partner The Toronto Star shows Canadian intelligence services raising flags about crypto brokers that move millions while dodging rules to guard against dirty money. A substantial portion of these services across Canada are “knowingly facilitating money laundering, sanctions evasion” and “transnational organized crime,” the report says.
IFC WATCHDOG IN CRISIS
The head of an internal auditor resigned last month after the World Bank's private investment arm rejected her office's report on safeguard policy violations related to a project in Cambodia. The watchdog found that microfinance lenders backed by the IFC had engaged in aggressive debt collection practices.
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Carmen Molina Acosta
ICIJ's digital editor |
