During the International Anticorruption Conference 2018, AntAC executive director Daria Kaleniuk participated in the panel discussion “Using Data to Counter Corruption and Money Laundering” and presented AntAC’s project pep.org.ua.
AntAC runs domestic and international advocacy campaigns calling for Western financial institutions to block suspicious assets of corrupt officials.
With this purpose AntAC gathers already reported in Ukraine facts about ill-gotten funds and alleged criminal corrupt activities, structures these facts in English and emphasizes the role of Western enablers – banks, company service providers, lawyers, accountants, nominal directors – in laundering dirty
funds of Ukrainian kleptocrats.
Through the course of the campaign to freeze assets of ousted president Yanukovych and his associates in 2013-2014, it became known to AntAC that
sometimes Western financial institutions do not notice or do not want to notice the Ukrainian politically exposed persons among their clients.
It appears to be quite profitable for some banks and bankers to provide services for foreign high risk corrupt PEP clients disregarding extremely suspicious origin of their wealth – to the extend the management of some of such institutions is ready to take risks of committing criminal offence.
Disregarding existing international anti-money laundering regulations Western financial institutions provide services to high risk clients – in such a way enabling corrupt officials, tycoons, kleptocrats and criminals across the developing world to park their dirty funds in the developed democracies.
For more details and possible solutions please see our brief.