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Environmental crime money easy to stash in US due to loopholes, report finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Environment
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(tldr: 1 sentences skipped)Illegal loggers and miners are parking sums ranging from millions to billions of dollars in US real estate and other assets, says the report, which calls on Congress and the White House to close loopholes in financial regulations that it says are contributing to the destruction of the world’s biggest tropical forest.
“We are trying to show that the US is the easiest place to hide dirty money, which is a major problem not just in terms of national security, drug trafficking and kleptocratic corruption but also environmental crime,” said Ian Gary, the executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (Fact) Coalition, which produced the report.
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A still more lucrative case linking Miami with Amazon nations was that of NTR Metals, which pleaded guilty to charges that it failed to maintain an adequate anti-money-laundering programme after revelations that it dealt with $3.6bn (£3bn) of illegal gold and fake ingots from Peru.
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In Maryland, the former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo allegedly bought properties to hide and launder $1.2m he received in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht for a contract to build the cross-Amazon interoceanic highway and other projects.
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Other case studies linked a Nevada firm to purchases of illegal timber from the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon, and a Connecticut company to forest clearance for a palm oil plantation in indigenous land.
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The report identifies two principal flaws in the US regulation of financial flows from other countries: permissive rules on identification that allow the use of anonymous shell companies; and gaping holes in the anti-money-laundering framework that enable estate agents and refineries to accept payments without checking and disclosing the origin of funds.
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