Financial crime is crime committed against property, involving the unlawful conversion of the ownership of property (belonging to one person) to one's own personal use and benefit. Financial crimes may involve fraud (cheque fraud, credit card fraud, mortgage fraud, medical fraud, corporate fraud, securities fraud (including insider trading), bank fraud, insurance fraud, market manipulation, payment (point of sale) fraud, health care fraud); theft; Confidence trick; tax evasion; bribery; sedition; embezzlement; identity theft; money laundering; and forgery and , including the production of counterfeit money and consumer goods.
Financial crimes may involve additional criminal acts, such as computer crime and elder abuse and even violent crimes including robbery, armed robbery or murder. Financial crimes may be carried out by individuals, , or by organized crime groups. Victims may include individuals, corporations, governments, and entire economies.
Law enforcement often classifies larger forms of financial collusion as criminal syndicates.
The Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF), which is recognized as the international standard setter for Anti-money Laundering (AML) efforts, defines the term "money laundering" briefly as "the processing of criminal proceeds to disguise their illegal origin" in order to "legitimize" the ill-gotten gains of crime.
In 2005, money laundering within the financial industry in the UK was believed to amount to £25bn a year. In 2009, a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) study estimated that criminal proceeds amounted to 3.6% of global GDP, with 2.7% (or US$1.6 trillion) being laundered.
The Irish Department of Housing urged minister Darragh O’Brien to “ask in the strongest terms for the UAE to account for its relationship to Daniel Kinahan” a drug kingpin charged along with his brother, Christopher Kinahan in 2018 by the High Court of controlling and managing the daily drug operations in Ireland. The Kinahan brothers are sons of the Kinahan Cartel founder, Christy Kinahan Senior, who smuggled drugs and firearms into the UK, Ireland, and mainland Europe for a long. For several years, the Kinahan leadership had been residing in Dubai, where Daniel denied his involvement in organized crime by defending himself as a ‘high-profile businessman in the professional boxing industry’. According to Panorama investigation, Daniel has operated in the boxing industry through MTK and simultaneously operated Europe’s biggest money laundering, drug trafficking, and gangland executions networks from Dubai. A spokesperson for minister O’Brien said, “respect for human rights is a cornerstone of Ireland’s foreign policy,” when asked if the minister would raise the concerns regarding Daniel’s presence and operations in Dubai on his visit in March 2022 for St Patrick’s Day.
With the increases in digital transaction volumes fraud and cybersecurity have become increasingly intertwined. Fraud and financial crime patterns have become more digital and faster changing, leveraging the underlying characteristics of the underlying digital payments infrastructures.[1] This caused traditional rule based systems to be ineffective and led the way to machine learning and AI-based fraud detection techniques.
Powered by the emerging generative AI capabilities and technical investments, criminal organizations have ramped up their capabilities in financial crimes and fraud space in recent years. Interpol director recently summarized the challenges as: "We are facing an epidemic in the growth of financial fraud, leading to individuals, often vulnerable people, and companies being defrauded on a massive and global scale."[2]
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