Financial Crime

Financial crimes have become one of the most serious problems in the world of growing digitalization. According to the Nasdaq statistics, the number of economic losses due to fraud activity has reached the mind-blowing point of almost 500 billion dollars. To prevent possible threats and minimize losses for your business, it’s crucial to implement necessary compliance measures, avoid regulatory issues, conduct financial audits, and acquire contacts of reliable financial crime solicitors in situations of internal investigations of the fall foul.

What is Financial Crime?

Financial crime is a crime committed against property involving the unlawful conversion of property ownership to one’s benefit.

The scope of this term delineates illegitimate operations that harness financial systems, services, or tools, mostly with an intent to derive unlawful benefits. The spectrum of financial crimes is extensive, ranging from money laundering and fraud to embezzlement, insider trading, and even encompassing the realm of cybercrime.

Generally, these offenses are pursued by individuals or colluding groups, intending to amass wealth from illegal endeavors such as narcotics trafficking, human smuggling, or acts of terrorism. The ripple effects of financial crimes are grave and far-reaching, provoking economic unrest, eroding public confidence in financial establishments, and undermining the foundation of legal systems.

Addressing the complex and dynamic challenge of financial crime necessitates a comprehensive, multi-pronged strategy. Key players in combating this menace include law enforcement officials, regulatory entities, and financial institutions. Effective deterrence measures against financial crimes entail fortifying anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist funding norms, amplifying international collaboration, and capitalizing on technology and data analysis to spotlight dubious activities.

Over the last 30 years, financial crime has become a major concern to governments worldwide. The concern arises as the effects of financial crime vary. Today, the occurrence of financial crime is a threat to economic development and stability in many societies.

INTERPOL established the Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre (IFCACC) to respond to the rise of financial crime and coordinate international responses.

What are the Different Types of Financial Crime?

Unfortunately, due to the non-stop development of modern technologies, the types, and severity of financial crimes have reached levels never seen before. For instance, only a few decades ago, we wouldn’t have believed in the necessity of significant investigations for crimes such as theft of identity due to the help of deepfake technologies, or various scams with the cryptocurrency. In the section below, we would like to present you with some of the most famous felony types, when the presence of a reliable financial crime lawyer is essential to prevent serious allegations from the fraud office. 

Fraud 

Fraud in criminal law is one of the most common types of financial felonies that lead to criminal investigations. Usually, fraud crime matter implies a set of deceitful practices that intend to force an individual into putting their funds into schemes like financial pyramids, or other untrustful organizations. The variety of fraud financial crimes includes each type, which we will describe below, and it includes identify thefts, and unauthorized use of individual financial data, like frauds with insurance, mortgages, etc. In general, financial fraud is a technique that is aimed at the intentional deception of a certain individual or establishment to obtain an undue advantage. 

Money Laundering 

Money laundering is a definition that we frequently hear from news reports. But how many of you know how money laundering works? Money laundering is a special process that is aimed at turning illicitly gained profits into legitimate ones. Typically, this fraud scheme requires a set of financial operations through the chain of different accounts to make sure that the source of the original income is obscured. It helps criminals to confuse the investigators regarding the sources of the acquired finance and ensure smooth management of the received funds. Therefore, when talking about the good of the company, anti-money laundering compliance is essential to prevent illegal funds from entering the company’s system. 

Terrorist Financing

Another serious financial crime that implies serious legal consequences is the financing of any terrorist activity. This crime can be connected with providing funds to certain individuals, dangerous organizations or generally providing funds to support this activity in certain regions or countries. What makes this crime even more dangerous is the fact that legal businesses and their accounts can unintentionally become a source of terrorism financing. It can happen due to the lack of attention to their partnership relationships, or sources of funding that their partners use. In the case, of allegations of terrorism financing, the presence of experienced international lawyers becomes essential for the further the best strategy and minimizing the damage caused to the reputation. 

Cybercrime

The Internet has gained a significant amount of influence over our lives in the past decades. However, with the undeniable benefit, we have faced all potential threats that the world net has covered beneath it. Cybercrimes have become a huge problem for individuals and companies of all kinds due to the unpredictability and harm that they can cause. Cybercrimes regularly include hacking activity, phishing, and different types of ransomware attacks. Therefore, with the evolution of digital technologies, the implementation of the proper cybersecurity measures becomes crucial for the safety of your finances. 

Bribery and Corruption

Despite various countermeasures that are being undertaken to prevent the spread of bribery and corruption, those financial crimes remain an unresolved problem for many countries around the world. However, it’s certainly crucial to separate bribery and corruption when talking about those two definitions. Speaking of bribery act, we mean the providing of certain goods to influence certain decisions. On the other hand, corruption refers to a much broader context that includes abuse of power, favouritism as well as obtaining undue advantage. Usually, those corruption crimes become a significant stumbling block for governmental institutions of all jurisdictions, since anti-bribery actions do not show the desired results. 

Embezzlement

Embezzlement is a special definition that implies a situation of theft that has taken place within professional settings. That happens when finance that was aimed at a specific professional cause has been spent on personal needs. This happens when an individual or financial crime team falsifies the documentation or transactional records to receive inappropriate compensation from the company. For instance, if the employee, who was sent on the business trip, falsifies the checks or documentation of the provided services to receive corporate compensation, that becomes an embezzlement case. 

Credit Card Fraud

Payment Card crimes include unauthorized use of individual financial data, to receive benefits from the saving of the particular individual. Such crimes are frequently based on data breaches, steals of sensitive issues, phishing crimes, etc. In cases when a criminal has full access to the individual financial data, a victim may lose significant amounts of personal savings due to unauthorized cash withdrawals or online purchases, which do not require additional authorization measures. All that makes advanced security technologies essential for the safe functioning of online banking systems. 

Identity Theft

Identity theft is another modern financial crime that can cause a lot of damage to the victim. In the case of identity theft, we are talking about the fraudulent use of the personal information of the victim, such as social security numbers, identity documentation, passports driver’s licences, etc. In addition to that, such a crime, can cause a lot of harm due to the complex and long process of the data’s restoration. The financial crime specialists may initiate the lengthy process to make sure that they indeed deal with the rightful document owner, to prevent the recurrence of unauthorized identity use. 

Insider Trading

Insider trading is a way of receiving an illegal benefit from selling the company’s stock based on access to secret information. Employees and upper management of the establishment may exploit the knowledge of the company’s state to sell or buy certain stocks and receive illegal financial advantages. This practice significantly influences the market’s integrity and causes significant damage to the customer’s trust and relations with the company’s audience. Therefore, the regulatory representative or special financial crime attorney may closely monitor any possibilities of insider trading for the prevention of fraudulent activity and market abuse.  

Tax Evasion

Evasion of the tax is another serious crime when a separate individual or a company avoids tax payments through available fraudulent means. In the case of tax evasion, we can discuss the forgery of financial reports, inflation of deductions, saving money in offshore accounts, and other inappropriate methods. Generally, tax evaders reduce their tax ability, which can cause potential harm to the taxation system of a certain state. In such cases, prosecuting authorities such as HM Revenue may use tax investigations and audits of the companies to prevent tax evasion and other fraud crimes. 

VAT Fraud

When talking about VAT fraud, we continue the topic that we initiated in the section about tax evasion. However, when talking about VAT criminal offence, we would be discussing a distinct tax type which is known as Value Added Tax or simply VAT. So how do criminal individuals or companies commit such a kind of crime? Usually, VAT tax fraud is connected to refunds for non-existing transactions, invoice falsifications, and failure to provide the remit collected VAT. However, such actions may not only deprive the governmental institutions of the required admissions, but also significantly slow down civil recovery. 

Interpol’s Pivotal Role in Combating International Financial Crimes

International financial crime is a significant concern for governments, businesses, and individuals worldwide. These crimes often involve complex networks and span across multiple jurisdictions, making it challenging to detect, investigate, and prosecute the perpetrators. Examples of international financial crimes include money laundering, tax evasion, terrorist financing, and cross-border fraud. As globalization continues to expand and technology advances, the opportunities for criminals to exploit the global financial system grow, posing a considerable threat to the stability and integrity of economies around the world.

Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, plays a crucial role in the fight against international financial crime. With 194 member countries, Interpol serves as a global platform for information sharing, coordination, and cooperation among law enforcement agencies. By facilitating real-time communication and intelligence exchange, Interpol enables member countries to work together in identifying, tracking, and apprehending criminals involved in international financial crime, even when they operate across multiple jurisdictions.

Interpol’s efforts in combatting financial crime are bolstered by specialized units and initiatives, such as the Interpol Financial Crimes Unit (IFCU) and the Global Focal Point Initiative. The IFCU provides support and expertise to member countries in investigating complex financial crime cases, including money laundering and asset recovery. The Global Focal Point Initiative, on the other hand, focuses on asset recovery by fostering collaboration and information exchange among asset recovery practitioners from different jurisdictions.

In addition to these initiatives, Interpol also works closely with other international organizations, such as the International Financial Crime Analysis and Coordination Center (IFCACC) and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), to develop strategies and best practices to prevent and counter international financial crime. By coordinating efforts and leveraging the collective expertise of law enforcement agencies and international organizations, Interpol plays an indispensable role in the global fight against financial crime and the pursuit of a more secure and stable international financial system.

Role of INTERPOL in Fighting Financial Crime

Financial crime has grown rapidly in recent years, impeding economic growth and causing losses to businesses and individuals. In addition, corruption complicates the financial crime issue creating a great opportunity for organized criminal activities.

The tactics of the criminals advance as globalization and digitization of processes continue to take effect. As a result, they modify their methods to seize new opportunities to defraud businesses and individuals.

There is a need for an immediate response to these crimes, and INTERPOL IFCACC is up to the task. IFCACC helps coordinate international responses. The program helps expand the existing initiatives for tackling financial crime, asset recovery, and illegal money flows.

The IFCACC works closely with key stakeholders to help in solving financial crime. These stakeholders include the financial sector, police organizations, law enforcement agencies and other financial task forces.

Capabilities of IFCACC

Some of the IFCACC capabilities include;

• Investigative Support- IFCACCS’s job is to support member countries by cross-checking data against the database provided by INTERPOL. It will help provide case mentoring and global support. 
• Analytical support- The IFCACC will focus its efforts on any emerging criminal threats through the Financial Crime Analysis File. The center works with member countries to strengthen the tactical response to internationally organized criminal activities.
• Operational support- IFCACC will coordinate global operations and action days against global financial crime threats. They will deploy their operational support team to help in ongoing investigations of the member states.

Defences Against Financial Crimes Charges

If your company or you personally have faced allegations regarding any financial crime, the outcome of the whole legal process will depend on the quality of the created defense strategy. A common defense in such cases usually consists of demonstrating the inaccuracy of the collected evidence base, the absence of the intent for committing the alleged crime, refusing the guilt, etc. However, in more complex cases, such an approach may become barely effective, especially in cases when the criminal offense has collected a solid legal base, or the evidence may be too convincing for the judge. 

In this case, you can contact our Interpol law firm to create a unique defense strategy. With our help, you will be able to avoid any potential penalties and clear the good name of your company and yourself personally. Be assured that after seeking help from our service, we provide advice that will keep your reputation clean.

Why Choose Our Financial Crime Lawyers?

Our lawyers have an exceptional reputation for advising clients during complex legal cases, and, more importantly, defense against several serious crimes at once. In addition to that, we are eager to offer a full commitment to the thorough investigation of the occurred situation to achieve justice for you as our client. We have assisted many financial companies, including bla-international.com. By choosing our company, you will receive top-notch representation from professionals with extensive experience in high-profile investigations, as well as the proper legal aid against the charging authorities from our experienced lawyers. 

Contact Financial Crime Solicitors

We believe that any financial concerns have to be treated with the highest level of effectiveness and expertise, which can only be provided by seasoned criminal solicitors. And that is what you will get if you decide to draw your attention to Interpol Law Firm. Our legal representatives are fully equipped and experienced in solving the most complex legal allegations, with the best possible outcome for our clients. Reach out to our large team of professionals to receive the best fraud financial crime lawyer who will ensure a reliable defense against any allegations.

Kendall Coffey

Senior Partner

Mr. Coffey is a former U.S. Attorney, Southern District of Florida (1993-1996); and served as Chair of, the Southern District Conference, Florida Federal Judicial Nominating Commission (April 2009 – January 2017).

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+357 25 059 684

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