CBP to Prioritize Trade-Based Money Laundering in Coming Year, Highsmith Says
CBP’s Office of Trade plans to prioritize efforts to combat trade-based money laundering in the new fiscal year, Executive Assistant Commissioner AnnMarie Highsmith said in the fall edition of CBP’s “Trade News Snapshot,” released Oct. 27.
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According to an article in the CBP newsletter, the most common form of trade-based money laundering “involves the deliberate and inaccurate description on customs declarations to artificially raise or lower the value of goods declared on import or export,” which allows “transnational criminal organizations and other bad actors [to] disguise and move illicit profits,” CBP said. “Laundered profits often fund violent conflicts around the world, corrupt government regimes, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation, according to Office of Trade experts.”
CBP “employs an intelligence-driven approach” to address these challenges, “looking for a variety of red flags, including payments made to a vendor via wire transfers from unrelated third parties; false reporting, such as commodity misclassification and over- and under-valuation; double invoicing; and packaging abnormalities that are inconsistent with commodity or shipping methods,” it said.