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Financial Institutions Struggling to Keep up with Trade-based Laundering: GAO

By Daniel Bethencourt

Financial institutions in the United States flagged only a few thousand instances of suspected over- and under-invoicing of goods and services, or other fraudulent trade-based schemes, over the course of five years, a government watchdog found. The total stands in stark contrast to the growing number of suspicious activity reports, or SARs, that institutions submit to the Treasury Department overall as well as with criminals' apparently increasing reliance on trade-based money laundering, or TBML, to wash their dirty funds, the Government Accountability Office concluded Wednesday. "Financial institutions have limited visibility into the underlying documentation of the majority of trade transactions...

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