WyzGuys Tech Talk

By Toby Patrick

In an attempt to disguise the illegal source of their wealth, criminals often turn to money laundering. While regular people are searching for debt help, criminals are laundering enormous amounts of money through banks and shell companies. Here are 5 of the biggest money laundering scandals that we’ve seen to date.  

Meyer Lansky

One of the earliest exponents of money laundering is a man named Meyer Lansky, a close acquaintance of the infamous Al Capone. After Capone was sent to jail for tax evasion, Lansky set about trying to hide funds.

Lansky was so successful in laundering money that he earned the title of the mafia’s accountant after working with the likes of Lucky Luciano. Lansky even set up his own offshore bank in Switzerland where he laundered money through complex financial techniques.

He was never convicted for money laundering and it’s believed he died with millions stashed in hidden bank accounts.

HSBC 

In 2012, HSBC was fined $1.9 billion, one of the biggest fines ever dished out, after being found to have laundered money for the Sinaloa Cartel. As well as this, the bank was found guilty of facilitating transactions from Iranian customers despite Iran being the subject of sanctions. 

The movement of illegal money is said to be the result of weak anti-money laundering systems while many have also pointed to the bank’s culture at the time which is said to have been driven by profits.

Wachovia 

Prior to being bought by Wells Fargo, Wachovia bank laundered more than $380 billion on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. Like HSBC, they were also fined for not applying anti-money laundering restrictions, to the tune of $160 million.

After moving an enormous amount of money into the US banking system, Mexican cartels used their illegal money to acquire aircraft which were then used to increase their drug trafficking efforts.

Danske Bank

In 2022, Danske Bank pleaded guilty to money laundering charges, resulting in a $2 billion penalty fine. At the heart of the scandal were $200 billion of suspicious transactions from the Estonian branch of Danske.

It’s believed that the funds were being used to finance terrorist activities, and according to a 2013 whistleblower, the bank was also dealing with members of the Putin family. Despite being warned in 2013, the scandal only came to light in 2017 before the bank pleaded guilty in 2022.

The scandal took a dark turn in 2019 when a former executive and key witness was found dead near his home. His death was ruled as a suicide. 

Nauru

Nauru is an island country in the Central Pacific which has historical ties to Russian money laundering scandals. Although the country has now passed anti-money laundering laws, it’s believed that the Russian mafia used Nauru to launder approximately $70 billion during the 1990s.

Nauru has a population of less than 15,000 but despite this, the country had 400 registered offshore banks during the 90s. Suspiciously, around half of these were created by Russian clients. The banks were said to have carried out very little, if any, checks on their customers.