By Jean Christou
WHO better to teach you about money laundering than a reformed money launderer?
Cypriot banks, lawyers and financial crime officers are to be given the inside scoop on the ‘tricks of the trade’ tomorrow and on Tuesday in Nicosia and Limassol respectively.
Miami-based Kenneth Rijock, 59, a decorated Vietnam vet, is a former lawyer who spent the best part of the eighties engaged in money laundering, but was jailed in 1990 for two years.
When he was released, he put what he learned to better use and now acts as a consultant on financial crime.
This week, he will give presentations to representatives from the Cyprus Financial Intelligence Unit (MOKAS), the International Bankers’ Association, the Law Association, the Cyprus Bar Association and the Association of Cyprus Banks.
“Mr Rijock’s presentation will… feature money laundering tradecraft and insider tips of the trade to assist Money Laundering Reporting officers in their daily activities,” said Marion Willson Corporate Communications Manager of World-Check, an informational organisation for financial institutions.
World-Check says Rijock is believed to be the only former banking lawyer-turned career money launderer who actively consults with law enforcement and the financial community.
While serving a federal prison sentence for racketeering and money laundering, he assisted with the first joint Swiss-American money laundering investigation of bankers and lawyers, which resulted in a major seizure of the proceeds of crime.
Since 1992, Rijock has provided extensive professional anti-money laundering services, including testifying three times, in 1999 and 2000, before committees of the US Congress in favour of anti-money legislation that was later included in the Patriot Act of 2001.
Rijock introduced himself to Congress saying: “My name is Kenneth Rijock, and I am a veteran of over one hundred domestic and international bulk cash smuggling operations, all of them successfully completed. These activities were conducted by me in direct support of narcotics smuggling and trafficking operations that distributed most of their drugs in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area.”
He said his trips involved sums of currency ranging from several hundred thousand dollars to six million, although he did not keep a personal record for obvious reasons.
Rijock also said the ever-expanding web of bank reporting requirements had caused many criminals to avoid the domestic financial sector entirely, and to rely upon an underground pipeline to export their net cash profits.
“Cash smugglers are only limited by the scope of their imaginations in contriving unusual and complex techniques in practicing their trade,” he said to Congress.
Some of the tactics used hiding cash in new computers being shipped or inside the padding of a hockey shirt.
“My personal methods of preference included the use of business jets carrying millions of dollars of drug cash, small, twin-engine aircraft owned by an affiliated charter service, taking scheduled airline service, meaning that I carried the cash right past the noses of airport security staff, and even small boats and water taxis,” he said.
Since giving up his criminal career, Rijock has also trained undercover agents for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, acting as a money launderer in an undercover role on behalf of law enforcement in Florida, and on behalf of network television in the tax havens of the Caribbean, and acting as consultant in money laundering tactics for a major Hollywood motion picture studio.
Source: Cyprus Mail
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