News

Italian authorities over the years have become experts on tackling organized-crime syndicates that conduct operations similarly to legitimate businesses while profiting from a range of illicit activity, including cigarette smuggling, human trafficking and counterfeiting. Such groups count on complicit attorneys, accountants and other professional enablers to launder their proceeds through misinvoicing schemes and corporate accounts opened for shell companies under their control, according to General Giovanni Padula, head of the anti-money laundering unit of the Guardia di Finanza, Italy's financial crime police. Padula told ACAMS moneylaundering.com reporter Valentina Pasquali in an email interview that Guardia di Finanza investigators rely heavily...