Risk Management Never Been So Simplified

Data: Advertising Analytics; Chart: Danielle Alberti/AxiosDemocrats are trouncing Republicans on the airwaves in the battle for the Senate, outspending them in nine of the top 10 competitive Senate races.Why it matters: Even before President Trump’s COVID dia…
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A desktop computer, shirts, shoes and a belt – these were items received by senior ANC MP Cedric Frolick as “birthday gifts” from Cheeky Watson, brother of the former Bosasa boss Gavin, the state capture inquiry heard on Friday. Frolick said these were the only Bosasa-linked items he received as gifts on his birthday, and not […]
The post ‘I only received gifts, not money’ – ANC MP Cedric Frolick claps back on Bosasa allegations appeared first on Talk of the Town.
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For four years, Donald Trump’s tax returns have been the white whale of political journalists and the most sought-after material of any presidency this side of Richard Nixon’s Watergate tapes. Naturally, when The New York Times obtained and published the trove, it was an epochal moment for the media and a major headache for Trump himself. The material the president said he couldn’t and wouldn’t release was suddenly out in the world, and it was immediately clear why he’d endeavored to conceal the goods: This self-described billionaire paid a total of $750 in federal income taxes the year he entered the White House—and none at all in 10 of the 15 years beforehand. The documents revealed that Trump was facing a possible $100 million tax penalty, on top of personal liability to the tune of $400 million in loans and debts.But buried in the details, tucked between the revelations of foreign financing and piling losses, stood another reason Trump worried about the returns leaking into the public arena. The tax returns pointed to a curious, and potentially criminal, bit of accounting sleight of hand that roped in what matters most to Trump: Ivanka.Per the Times, Trump’s filings showed that some of the millions of dollars in consulting fees listed just happened to line up with filings attached to his daughter’s own financial disclosures. Ivanka, who remains a special adviser to her father, “had been an executive officer of the Trump companies that received profits from and paid the consulting fees for both projects—meaning she appears to have been treated as a consultant on the same hotel deals that she helped manage as part of her job at her father’s business.” With the filings and funds bouncing between the Trump Organization and a Delaware LLC and straight into Ivanka’s pockets, Trump appears to have “reduced his taxable income by treating a family member as a consultant, and then deducting the fee as a cost of doing business.”Or put another way: Trump appears to have spun Ivanka, a lieutenant in his paper empire, as a mere consultant as a means of gutting his taxable income. Suffice it to say, the maneuver is not simply highly unethical but likely illegal. In years past, the IRS has pursued civil penalties against others for devising just such schemes. Nor would Trump likely be the only party liable. After all, tax fraud schemes like this always require witting partners on both ends of the payment. And what better partner in a scam to defraud the IRS—and, by extension, the American taxpayer—than a daughter who appears eager to follow in her crooked father’s footsteps?If you peer past the gilded, airbrushed image Ivanka has spent years cultivating, it’s not difficult to discern just how much of her father’s essence oozes through her own business practices. Rather than the manicured professional and golden American princess she professes to be, Ivanka has a track record that illustrates just how willingly she’s imbibed her father’s fetish for fraud.Look at the most substantial projects Ivanka oversaw prior to Trump’s presidency, for instance. Trump’s earliest efforts to groom Ivanka, along with her brothers Eric and Donald Jr., to inherit his empire came through most clearly in a pair of projects more drenched in foreign corruption and money laundering than anything Trump has ever pursued.First, there was Trump’s effort to enter the Panamanian market earlier this decade. The Trump Ocean Club project, formerly located in Panama City, was the family’s “largest project in, actually, all of the Americas,” as Ivanka once claimed. It was also destined to be, according to Trump, Ivanka’s “baby.” From its early days, Ivanka was reportedly involved intimately in the creation and associated sales of the sail-shaped building. An exhaustive 2017 investigation from Reuters confirmed as much. The building’s primary broker, Alexandre Henrique Ventura Nogueira, claimed he met with Ivanka at least 10 times to discuss the Panamanian project, adding that Ivanka was the primary figure responsible for all aspects of the Trump Ocean Club deal. As the anti-corruption watchdog Global Witness wrote, the building came with Ivanka’s “personal touch.” (Said a laughing Ivanka in a promotional video, “Some people say it resembles a giant D.”)One problem, though: The signs of money laundering affiliated with the building were as bright and blinding as anything in the entire Western Hemisphere. Not only were many units purchased in cash or via anonymous shell companies—including buyers linked to Russian organized crime—but many were likewise purchased in bulk, another traditional sign of money laundering. Some sales were even conducted via so-called bearer shares, tools so notoriously affiliated with money-laundering operations that they’ve been banned across multiple jurisdictions. As one of the Global Witness investigators who uncovered the dirty money schemes said, “We found that there were some pretty consistent signs of money laundering.” Or take it from Ventura Nogueira, the man who liaised with Ivanka time and again; as he later confessed, “When I was in Panama, I was regularly laundering money for more than a dozen companies.” Ivanka’s Panamanian “baby” was the locus for all this graft.And then there’s Azerbaijan. In that country—already steered by one of the most kleptocratic, oleaginous regimes in the entire world—Trump’s efforts at creating a Trump Tower Baku ended up so poorly managed that it became, as The New Yorker dubbed it, “Trump’s worst deal.” It’s not hard to see why. Not only did the Trumps work closely with the family of Azeri oligarch Ziya Mammadov—a man dubbed by American diplomats as “notoriously corrupt, even for Azerbaijan”—but, as reporter Adam Davidson found, the building’s construction may well have been used to launder funds for members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, violating America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act along the way. “The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag,” an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School told Davidson. “Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”And the woman who oversaw the building’s construction? None other than Ivanka. According to Ivanka, the Trump project in Azerbaijan would “make for an exciting addition to the Trump Organization’s expanding portfolio.” As one Azeri lawyer involved in the project said, Ivanka “personally approved everything.” Ivanka even posted updates from the building directly to her own Instagram, where she described it as “my project.” But when word began getting around of all the corruption Ivanka had apparently overlooked—and when the project itself began falling apart, both physically and figuratively—Ivanka tried to scrub her website of any evidence of her involvement.Ivanka doesn’t talk much about either of her “projects” these days. The Azeri building stands as a burnt-out husk, bogged down in money-laundering allegations and stripped of the Trump name. Workers at the Panamanian resort-cum-money laundromat memorably chiseled off Trump’s name in 2018, amid scuffles and physical altercations between new management and Trump Hotel staff. Both of the buildings most closely associated with Ivanka’s efforts have effectively imploded, leaving little but the imprints of corruption and kleptocracy in their wake.But there’s also another project Ivanka doesn’t much discuss, a bit closer to home. Earlier this decade, Ivanka helped lead development and sales at the Trump SoHo project in New York City. If you’ve heard of the project, it’s likely either because of its close association with crooked post-Soviet oligarchs or because, like those in Azerbaijan and Panama, it is yet another failed Trump project that no longer bears the Trump name. But one other aspect of the building has escaped broader notice, buried under all the other detritus of Trump’s cascading corruption. In 2017, ProPublica revealed that Ivanka, alongside Donald Trump Jr., had helped hawk Trump SoHo unit sales to prospective buyers in the building’s early days. At one of the launch events, Ivanka claimed that sales of a remarkable 60 percent of the units had already been finalized. “We’re in a very fortunate position where we have enough sales, and now we are strategically targeting certain buyers,” she claimed. That, naturally, was a lie: Even two years after her claims, only 16 percent of the units had been sold, with the building well on its way toward its eventual failure. But in a move almost as imbecilic as her father’s trying to hide his taxes for years on end, Ivanka reportedly traded emails admitting how aware she was that she was peddling faulty numbers in order to lure new buyers. “In one email, according to four people who have seen it, the Trumps discussed how to coordinate false information they had given to prospective buyers,” ProPublica wrote. There was “no doubt” Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. “approved, knew of, agreed to, and intentionally inflated the numbers to make more sales,” per one person familiar with the emails. “They knew it was wrong.”Not that that stopped them. Shortly thereafter, Manhattan District Attorney prosecutors began building out a criminal case against the two Trump children for lying to prospective buyers. The email chain all but begged for charges. “You couldn’t have had a better email trail,” one person familiar with the investigation told ProPublica. Discussions began about impaneling a special grand jury. “An indictment seemed like a real possibility,” ProPublica noted. And then: nothing. Despite the emails, despite Ivanka’s ludicrous public lies in order to sucker new buyers, then–District Attorney Cyrus Vance axed the investigation—a move that just happened to coincide with a substantial donation to his office from none other than Donald Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz. Ivanka skated and swiftly moved on to greener pastures: the creation of dirty money laundromats in Azerbaijan and Panama, and, as has recently come to light, the abetting of her father’s tax schemes.Still, all great scams must come to end. The recent release of Trump’s tax returns is almost certainly just the first in a line of bombshells about to drop: about Trump’s business practices, about his presidential proclivities, about his views on everything from the American military to American evangelicals. His children will likely be as intimately involved in what’s to come as they were in the notorious projects at home and abroad that led us to this point. While guaranteeing what the future holds in the Trump era is a sucker’s game, it’s growing much less certain that Trump will continue in the White House. He instead appears more likely to spend his future days in the same spots so many of his compatriots have found themselves: the courtroom and jail. And if that future does come to pass—whether it’s due to tax fraud or any number of similar charges—don’t be surprised if Ivanka continues to be his constant companion, by his side and on the docket.
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Business advisory firm KPMG says with the current state, investors are chasing high-returns and so could fall into the trap of fraud.
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Ishaka Abdullahi

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has arraigned the Education Secretary of Sabon Birni Local Government Area of Sokoto State, Ishaka Abdullahi, before Justice Malami Umar Dogondaji of the state high court for fraud.
Abdullahi was arraigned on a six-count charge bordering on obtaining money by false pretence to the tune of N429,000.
According to a statement by Head of Media and Publicity of the commission, Wilson Uwujaren, Abdullahi is facing trial for alleged fraud in the school feeding programme.

Ishaka Abdullahi

EFCC

Uwajaren said the commission’s investigations revealed that one Hassi Abdullahi, who was appointed one of the cooks in the programme and had a Union Bank account number 0077129142, died on March 18, 2019, yet funds were still being channelled to her account from the HGSFP account, totalling N429, 000 which was fraudulently withdrawn.
The statement reads, “Count one of the charge reads: “That you, Ishaka Abdullahi on or about the 16 November, 2018 at Sabon Birni Local Government Area of Sokoto State, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, did obtain the sum of N135,000.00 (One hundred and thirty-five thousand naira) from Hassi Abdullahi’s account No. 0077129142, domiciled in Union Bank Plc by false pretence.”
Abdullahi, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge following which prosecution counsel, S. H. Sa’ad, asked for a trial date and for him to be remanded in prison custody, while defence counsel, Ibrahim Abdullahi, prayed the court to grant the defendant bail on the grounds that he was standing trial in the same court on a different charge.
Justice Malami Dogondaji granted the accused bail on the same conditions that were applied in the earlier charge for which he was facing prosecution in the same court and adjourned the matter till October 12, 2020, for the commencement of trial.

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Eleven years on from the creation of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency security is still a genuine struggle. Crypto security firm Slowmist keeps an ongoing log of blockchain, exchange, and wallet hacks. So far, the company estimates that blockchain hackers have lifted a cool $13 billion in 319 separate events. And hacking is big business. Far from the stereotype of a solo operator launching cyber-attacks from a laptop, cryptocurrency attacks these days are more likely attributable to an organization such as the Lazarus Group. Most recently, the North Korean crime syndicate has been associated with a series of phishing attacks targeting cryptocurrency
The post How to Keep Your Cryptocurrencies Safe in 2020 first appeared on NextBigFuture.com.
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Financial crime as a wider category of cybercrime continues to be one of the most potent of online threats, covering nefarious actives as diverse as fraud, money laundering and funding terrorism. Today, one of the startups that has been building data intelligence solutions to help combat that is announcing a fundraise to continue fueling its […]
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A MONTH after police warned the public to be wary of a growing trend of pyramid schemes in TT – also called “sou sou” schemes – nine people including a member of the defence force were held and a large quantity of cash seized by police after a raid at a house in La Horquetta on Tuesday afternoon.
Police said members of the Special Operations Response Team (SORT) and officers of the Northern Division co-ordinated by Police Commissioner Gary Griffith, DCP Jayson Forde and Supt Ramkhelawan, went to a building along Kathleen Warner Drive at 11.40 am.
According to a police media release, the exercise was launched in response to reports that people were violating the covid19 regulations by gathering outside the house to collect money from the get-rich-quick scheme, but the crowd dispersed when they saw the police.
Sources said while they could not determine the exact quantity of cash seized in the building, they estimated it to be “in the millions” and said it was hidden in the ceiling and in a water tank. It was originally reported that ten people were arrested, but one was later released.
Of the nine still in custody, a 45-year-old man identified as a senior member of the defence force was arrested for possession of a gun and ammunition. Those detained are expected to be interviewed by investigators from the Financial Intelligence Branch and other units to explain how they came into possession of the cash.
When Newsday visited the scene, residents questioned the accuracy of the information given by police and claimed the system was not a pyramid scheme but a legitimate sou-sou organised by trusted members of the community including established money lenders.
A sou-sou is a community-based form of savings in which a group of people agrees to pay a sum of cash either fortnightly or monthly, to each other, in a set, rotating pattern.
Newsday understands the pyramid scheme which police are concerned with see participants in a social media group, usually WhatsApp, giving up their money (usually $600 or $700) with the promise of returns on the “investment” as high as $56,000 only to be told later via WhatsApp that the scheme had failed and such is the risk with these kinds of investments.
According to Section 57 (2) of the Proceeds of Crime Act, someone convicted of illegally obtaining cash is liable to be fined $500,000 on summary conviction or imprisonment for two years or $3 million and seven years’ imprisonment on conviction on indictment.
In August, Newsday reported that hundreds of people had “invested” thousands of dollars into a pyramid scheme with promises of double and even triple returns.
One Fraud Squad officer said the scheme was designed to target vulnerable people whose sources of income were affected by the covid19 pandemic and confirmed several meetings were held by police to discuss ways of investigating the network.
In the media release on Thursday, Police Commissioner Gary Griffith warned the public that police can seize large quantities of cash if the owner cannot give a proper account for it. Efforts to reach Chief of Defence Staff, Air Cmdr Darryl Daniel for comment on the raid were unsuccessful.
The post 9 held in sou sou raid appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.
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KUALA LUMPUR: CIMB Group Holdings Bhd, one of the banks reportedly mentioned in a leaked document of the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), said it is diligent in filing Suspicious Activity Reports when appropriate and adheres to a robust due diligence process in a secured and controlled environment.“CIMB Group takes its role in protecting the integrity of the global financial system seriously and complies strictly to corporate governance laws and regulations as stated in the Group’s Anti-Money Laundering/Counter Financing of Terrorism Policy and Procedures,” it said in response to a recent news item on FinCEN document leaks concerning numerous banks in Malaysia and where CIMB was mentioned.The report, citing the purported document, said a total of 23 transactions involving US$18.26 million that flowed to or from banks in Malaysia between 2010 and 2016 had been flagged by US-based banks as suspicious.-Bernama
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  The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Gombe Zonal Office is interrogating one Eze Mavus Ugochukwu, a student of Computer Science, Bauchi State Polytechnic, who defrauds unsuspecting members of the public by posing as a Lieutenant in the Nigerian Army. Ugochukwu, an indigene of Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State was arrested by … Continue reading Fake Army Lieutenant In EFCC Net For Multiple Fraud
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