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Bank Eye to Human Trafficking - el nuevodia

by Rut N. Tellado Domenech, on Mar 23, 2020 2:50:00 PM

This article has been transferred and translated from its original source. To read the original article in full, please click here

When children are used as mules to carry drugs, they are introduced to child pornography or taken to hotels under the networks of sex tourism, they become victims of human trafficking.

This is a crime, punished at the state and federal level, which adults may have among their victims when they are forced into prostitution or forced labor. It is also a crime that, due to the large amount of illegal money generated worldwide - $ 150.2 billion a year - can involve banks and other financial institutions.

"Traffickers of people use the financial sector to do business, open bank accounts, apply for loans, can pay by check or credit card through the internet," said María de Lourdes Jiménez, a compliance expert lawyer and in charge of coordinating the content of the
Anti-Money Laundering Symposium of the Association of Banks of Puerto Rico , which takes place today and ends tomorrow at the Puerto Rico Convention Center, in Miramar.

One of the topics to be discussed at the event will be human trafficking and its impact on banking. He said that human traffickers can deposit money from their crimes in banks and then be able to use it in legitimate activities or pass it through legal money. Therefore, it is an issue that relates to money laundering.

"Federal statutes require banks to have suspicious activity monitoring programs," Jiménez said. “But it is not so easy to detect. Therefore, alliances with law enforcement authorities help financial institutions to detect this type of activity. ”

As an example of suspicious activities that financial institutions may notice, he mentioned when the same client makes many payments, or disbursements in large quantities, for hotel rooms, which may indicate that he is engaged in sex tourism. He said that other behavior that can raise suspicions is when wire transfers from multiple clients in different countries to the same beneficiary are registered, or many transfers from an account to different branches of the same bank on the same day or on consecutive days, especially if they involve cities which are located on the border between Mexico and the United States.

If a bank detects any such behavior, Jiménez said the institution proceeds to investigate. If you determine that it may be a suspicious activity, make a report that you send to the Financial Crime Control Network (Fincen, in English) to conduct your investigation. "A good practice is to have the contact of law enforcement agencies to notify them of the report and also investigate," said the lawyer. Among those agencies, he mentioned Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ).

“Once the report is filed, the bank can keep the suspicious account open and monitor it. Depending on the importance of the case, law enforcement agencies may ask the bank to keep the account open in what they investigate, ”Jiménez said.

To discuss this and other issues, the symposium will be the keynote speakers of the head of the federal prosecutor's office in Puerto Rico, Stephen Muldrow, and Gary Shiffman, chief executive officer of Giant Oak, a company that provides threat detection technology to professionals from financial institutions and national security. The event is aimed at financial industry personnel.

Topics:Press

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