Kenneth Rijock - Financial Crimes Consultant for World-Check

1. Which country do you think launder more Money in the World? Which one is the number one?

Kenneth Rijock: “Well it is hard to say because there is no a reliable statistics, but frankly is probably that the Unites States because we are the global financial center. But if you are looking for countries which have a degree of guilt for knowing of launder money, well certainly you would have to go else where because United States has financial laws and enforcement, but given our high volume of transactions of course the most of money laundering is happening in the United States”.

2. But this is an ironic situation, US has legislations to control and prevent this crime, isn’t it?

Kenneth Rijock: “The problem is what be call PEPs, Politically Expose Persons, those people who work in government, military or is in a position to be close to the government in another country and who has the ability to receive brides or to take money out of the public treasury of their own country and then bring it into the US to launder it here and we do not catch it, that is the problem”.     

3. You said in an interview once that your career as a money launder began by accident, do you think today the same thing happen to other people that are part of this business? 

Kenneth Rijock: “No, I think most people now become money launder intentionally by desire and by greed. In my instance, I had clients that were involved in the traffic of narcotics and then became friends of mine and then clients and frankly in that time I was not that interest in enforcing the drug laws of my country because I though we should decriminalized drugs because this crime had not put a lot of people in prison. But the point is that now is different In the 80 there was a huge demand of North Americans using illegal drugs but that has changed now, and now the people that are consuming drugs are the European. So anybody that get involve in narcotics trafficking is intentional, people do not fall into criminal activities these days by accident. What we are looking at here is people trying to clean the proceeds of crime whether is a drug or weapons or prostitution of gambling, these individual are in this business for the money and not for any kind of political cause. And I would like to make a statement because in the 1980 I did not think drugs should be criminalized, people should get life sentence for drug trafficking, I have changed my mined because after crack, cocaine and a lot of other troubles you do not need to have cocaine and dangerous drug dealers around you. So let me answer your question I think absolutely no, they do it out of greed and is intentional”.          

4. Do you feel concern about the last report published by the US Senate in which is described how PEPs got money into the US with out saying what was the source of such money?

Kenneth Rijock: “Absolutely, we need to change our laws and if you read the report what the government wants to do is to make a mandatory for professionals to certify that when they are hanging out money from clients, the clients source of money is legitimate and that there is no criminal activity involved. Those lawyers are just as bad as any criminal by snaking money into the country to different accounts, they are just as bad as the PEPs smuggling money, there is no different between a lawyer and a PEP, in mi mind they are both criminals. The lawyers hit the money in bank accounts which are supposed to be use by legitimate clients business and they move money around from one account to another account, and if this account is closed they find a new bank. These professionals abuse of their professional positions of trust to conduct money laundering operations to buy different properties. These professionals should go to jail for money laundering just like their clients. 

5. When do you think the US Congress would take measures about it?

Kenneth Rijock: “I do not think they do it this year. In 2011 the congress would take around to it. But it took years after 9/11 for the Congress to enact the PATRIOT ACT which raise the AML compliance, but we will have to wait and see if the Congress has the political will to go after lawyers, accounts, real estate agents who are dirty”.

6. Money launders works 24/7 and obyously the US report shows that there is a problem inside financial institutions, do you think is because there is a problem investing in sophisticated systems or the employees are not well inform?

Kenneth Rijock: “The problem is very simple that when it comes to high network clients the bank would rather take the investment and risk a problem with the regulators than saying no to the business. They know that they will be fine in the future. The problem is that they are not serious enough about AML compliance, they are doing it because is in the law not because they feel they have to do it. And the problem is that they are not practicing what we call an enhanced due diligence, which is a higher level of compliance to ensure that clients funds are ok and that the client is Ok. If the lawyers and accounts and real estate agents start to go to jail then bankers will upgrade their level compliance, maybe if they go to jail this might scare others by thinking the can get away with it.      

7. Today in which jurisdiction is easer to launder money? 

Kenneth Rijock:  “What is happening is that money launders are taking what is called Non Money Financial Institutions: Casas de Cambio, money transmitters, stock brokers, brokerdealers, they go to places where regulations are not so strict, where is easer to operate and basically a place where money is constantly being move and not necessarily invest. So the criminal goes to banks and if here gets difficult he goes to non banks institutions and if he gets difficult there too he goes with private companies. They always go to other places with lower regulation”. 

8. But let supposed there is a list, which countries would be in this list?

Kenneth Rijock: “There is no black list,but the FATF is in a meting and they are going to put out a new one where tax havens in the Caribbean and Europe would be named. Many of these countries had already been listed in the previous list by the FATF. But where is the money laundering going on, is not a question of where is a question of that is going on in most every place where corruption exist or where people would look the other way to take deposits. We have problems such as FARC, ELN, HEZBOLA, AL QAEDA, HAMASS, all of them designated as terrorist groups involve in fund raising, and problems in borderlines such as Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Venezuela. It still happening and it is out of control. We need more legislation, we need more people arrested and convicted to scare people out of doing it because if you are not afraid of the consequences you will take a chance to make extra money and help somebody to launder their cash. We have come a long way and we have a long way to go”.