March 2021 - FINANCIAL FLOWS AND PAYMENT MECHANISMS - BEHIND WILDLIFE AND FOREST CRIME

In the case of an 8-digit code, the first four countries to send and receive financial transactional digits identify the financial institution, the next two reflect information to and from each other in a standardised the country and the last two represent the city. [...] jurisdictions; of the use of financial instruments and fraud to conceal the ownership of assets; and of money-laundering To illustrate the issue of convergence, Figure 2 provides methods that are converging amongst different forms of examples of where the illegal wildlife trade has been linked transnational organised crime. [...] All three perpetrators were convicted of local accomplices to a maximum sentence of 15 years in organised crime in violation of sections 57(1) and 60(2) of prison54 for operating an ivory-smuggling ring responsible the Economic and Organised Crime Control Act and unlawful for the trafficking of 860 elephant tusks between 2000 and dealing in trophies in violation of the Wildlife Conservation 2014. [...] RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS As part of the Know Your Customer (KYC) form, request Perform enhanced due diligence to the accounts of high- information about the purpose of the account and an risk businesses to wildlife and forest crime in source estimation of the foreseen monthly cash flow. [...] 36 FINANCIAL FLOWS AND PAYMENT MECHANISMS In November 2017, after a two-year investigation in Gabon, Ministry of Justice and the Interior, the Ministry of Defense, an elite unit of the National Gendarmerie, the Gabonese the National Agency of Spatial Study and Observation, secret service and forest rangers arrested the suspect of the Directorate General for External Security of France leading an o.