You are here: Home / Archives for Sudan

A Line in the Sand: Getting Tough on Money Laundering in Dubai and the UAE | Westlaw Business

May 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Administrative map of the United Arab Emirates...
Image via Wikipedia

Whopping $500 million fines are just one reason sanctions and anti-money laundering measures continue to haunt international commerce. With advances in electronic transmittals, hundreds of billions in dirty money swirls all over the world with breathtaking speed and efficiency. Rather than passively watching the problem spiral, however, the United Arab Emirates and one of its prominent regulators have stepped in with aggressive preemptive action.

With last week’s mega fine imposed by the U.S. on ABN Amro (since acquired by Royal Bank of Scotland) for “turning a blind eye” to sanctions against Iran, Cuba and other countries, the focus of international efforts to control criminal cash flows has received renewed attention. The U.S. and the UN have traditionally borne the yoke of international trafficking cops, but when it comes to money laundering, the United Arab Emirates and the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) have drawn a line in the sand.

The Sanctions Committee of the United Nations, for example, is a subset of the UN Security Council. From Saddam’s Iraq, to Darfur in the Sudan, the UN has long advocated the use of sanctions “as an enforcement tool when peace has been threatened and diplomatic efforts have failed.” As a consequence, companies and individuals doing business with rogue states bring themselves within the legal jurisdiction of a world body.

The U.S., meanwhile, has a number of different mechanisms for combating illicit traffic. On an international scale, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), contained within the Department of Treasury, maintains a list of Specially Designated Nationals. Doing business with individuals and companies on this list subjects U.S. citizens and residents to criminal penalties. Because the list is public information, a presumption of intent when doing business with any person or entity on the list. OFAC maintains a list of 20 extant sanctions programs on its website; the site also includes a list of memoranda between OFAC and bank regulators.

Though not as large or influential as the UN or U.S., the UAE, a geographically a tiny Gulf outpost, has in its own right backed up its claim as a world financial center by committing considerable energy and resources to combating not only money laundering but the financing of terror. The DFSA oversees the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), a self-contained financial free zone with its own civil and commercial law framework located in the Emirate of Dubai. As for penal law, however, UAE federal law still applies not only to the DIFC but all free zones. The DFSA thus provides the compliance mechanisms and the UAE the criminal penalties for money laundering.

While not an Islamic issue, money laundering has received attention from both the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) and the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB). Both organizations, in their respective governance and corporate responsibility provisions, underscore the importance of compliance with relevant AML laws.

via A Line in the Sand: Getting Tough on Money Laundering in Dubai and the UAE.

Related articles by Zemanta
Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

China Litigation And Arbitration. Maybe. – China Law Blog: a blog about Chinese law and the legal issues of doing business in China.

April 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

People far too often focus on the law or the choice of law, when so often it is not the law so much that determines the best place to proceed with a lawsuit, but the intangibles. The reality is that most breaches of contract in the United States also constitute a breach of contract in China, in Russia, in the Sudan, or wherever else. Buying a product and then not paying for it is, as far as I know, a breach of contract everywhere in the world. Similarly, getting drunk and running someone over with your car gives rise to a cause of action probably everywhere in the world as well. I am not saying the choice of law is not important, but I am saying it is wrong to assume it is the most important.

Take negligence. Getting run over by a drunk driver is probably pretty much the same cause of action in both China and the United States and the laws for that cause of action will probably be pretty much the same. But let's get real here and ask where would you rather have that lawsuit if you are the plaintiff? In the United States where you could put your friends and relatives on the witness stand to testify in front of a jury on how you have never been the same since the accident and where multi-million dollar verdicts are commonplace, or in China where your only evidence may end up being a written doctor’s report and where you will be lucking to get $30,000?

Or take a breach of contract where you purchase a defective part to go into a piece of equipment you make and sell for a million dollars. In the United States you would have a good chance of collecting the profits you lost by not being able to sell your million dollar equipment, whereas in China your chances of getting those lost profits would be minuscule.

via China Litigation And Arbitration. Maybe. – China Law Blog: a blog about Chinese law and the legal issues of doing business in China..

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

U.S. says Credit Suisse schemed to evade sanctions | Reuters

December 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

U.S. and Manhattan prosecutors detailed on Wednesday a “decades-long scheme” by Credit Suisse to hide thousands of transactions on behalf of clients in Iran, Sudan, Libya and other nations, and said the Swiss bank had agreed to pay $538 million in fines.

More than $1.6 billion was moved through the U.S. financial system through the transactions, prosecutors said.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau told a news conference that other banks were being investigated for similar transactions.

“There will be other prosecutions,” he said. “Not only of financial institutions, which carry the money, but also of the suppliers.”

In Zurich, a source who declined to be identified, said nine banks were involved and that four had settled, including Lloyds TSB Group of Britain and Credit Suisse.

While the majority of the transactions involved Iran, other transactions violated U.S. sanctions against Sudan, Libya, Myanmar, Cuba, and the former Liberian regime of Charles Taylor, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

The department called the settlement the “most significant” in the history of its Office of Foreign Assets Control and said the penalty could have been “substantially higher” had the bank not cooperated with the government over the past two years and agreed to take remedial action.

via U.S. says Credit Suisse schemed to evade sanctions | Reuters.

Filed Under: From The News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,