News
Conviction Reversal of Ex-McKinsey Adviser Highlights Exemptions for Sanctions, MSB Laws
By Brian Monroe
printA federal court ruling reversing convictions against a former financial adviser for running an unlicensed money remitter that accepted money from Iran highlights little known exceptions to prohibitions on accepting Iranian money. On Tuesday, the United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit in New York reversed the conviction of ex-McKinsey & Co. consultant Mahmoud Reza Banki for violating Iran sanctions and reversed and remanded his conviction for running an informal international transfer business known as a hawala. The court upheld two convictions of lying in response to U.S. Treasury Department subpoenas. Banki, who accepted $3.4 million from family members who...
TO READ THE FULL STORY
Related News
New U.S. Treasury Department banking restrictions designed to hamstring Iran's nuclear program will curtail personal remittances and the ability to receive payments for licensed exports to the country, say analysts.
Last year's failed Times Square car bombing has been the chief impetus behind a recent U.S. Treasury Department's initiative to identify unregistered money services businesses and hawala networks, according to sources.
Bank of America failed to investigate $160 billion in suspicious transactions used to perpetrate an alleged $20 billion fraud by a wealthy Saudi Arabian businessman, a congressional witness said Tuesday.
A Manhattan court Wednesday indicted a New York man for allegedly transferring money illegally to Faisal Shahzad, the 31-year-old man who attempted to detonate a homemade bomb in Times Square.
Three weeks before he attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square on May 1, Faisal Shazhad, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Connecticut, was in New York picking up $7,000 in cash sent by a suspected member of a Pakistani terrorist group using an age-old informal transmission network.
Venezuela announces plans to create a public bond market, 14 individuals charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization, in this week's roundup.
A New York court convicted a former executive of a prominent management consultancy of helping transfer $3.4 million into Iran through the informal exchange system known as hawala.
The U.S. Supreme Court okays the extradition of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and a prominent Florida lawyer pleads guilty to bilking investors out of $1.2 billion in a massive Ponzi scheme, in this week's news roundup.
Federal prosecutors indicted three New York men Wednesday for allegedly helping send approximately $300,000 to Iran and other countries through unregistered hawalas, a type of informal money exchange network.
Federal investigators Thursday arrested a former consultant of a prominent New York management company for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions against Iran through the operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business.
As the nexus between terrorist financing and drug trafficking widens, financial institutions will have to more closely scrutinize their correspondent banking relationships, say consultants.
The men operating two money services businesses illegally transferred about $4 million in government money they believed to be the proceeds of smuggled drugs and cigarettes, and in one case, funding for the terrorist group al Qaeda, according to the indictments.
The bill would prohibit using more than $10,000 in funds "legitimate or otherwise" to facilitate so-called specified unlawful activities, crimes used to establish money laundering cases.
Marc Hambach, an assistant director of the Dubai Financial Services Authority and head of its AML department, spoke with reporter Brian Orsak about the process of developing regulations for one of the fast growing financial hubs in the world.