FATF REPORT - Money Laundering from Environmental Crime - July 2021

The Project Team also benefitted from inputs from observers and international organisations including the CITES Secretariat, European Commission, the Egmont Group, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation of American States- Department against Organized Transactional Crime, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank Group and the World Customs Organi. [...] 8 Similarly, in the case of the Gambia, estimated illegal exports of rosewood (about US$100 million, as declared on import) are worth about half of the country’s total exports, about 10% of GDP, and more than 20 times the budget of the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Natural Resources. [...] The overall intent is a deliberate effort to create as many layers as possible between the commission of the environmental crime and the account holder where the funds are placed following the sale of the illegal good. [...] The payment would then be made either by the intermediary to the smuggler, or would come later once the intermediary got the gold to a refiner in the Middle East.16 Where there is onwared smuggling to Asia, criminals often rely on informal remittance networks such as hawalas, in an effort to avoid the scrutiny of the formal financial sector. [...] The investigation resulted in the conviction of seven subjects, restitution of approximately USD 16 million in the United States and USD 25 million in Chile, and the disruption of a major international precious metals smuggling and money laundering operation.