By reading the ReputationUP Coach article on financial crime, you will learn the most common types, who investigates them, and their impact on companies.
Definition of financial crime
A financial crime is an illegal activity committed with the intent of embezzling a company, individual, or bank’s economy.
Financial scandals affect the economic activity of companies, brands, and even their financial reputation.
INTERPOL warns about financial crimes:
“These are serious criminal activities whose importance should not be minimized as over and beyond their social and economic impact, they are often closely linked to violent crime and even terrorism.”
What are the most common financial crimes?
The following offenses are classified as financial crimes by INTERPOL:
- Theft is the fraudulent appropriation of someone else’s money through the use of force, violence, or intimidation.
- Fraud: an infraction committed by those in charge of supervising contract execution to get illegal gain.
- Cheating is the intentional concealment of the truth to cause harm to another person.
- Blackmail is the act of threatening someone (for example, by revealing secrets) for monetary gain.
- Corruption is the use of one’s authority and means for personal benefit.
- Money Laundering: an illegal operation to hide the origin and location of the money within the financial system.
Money laundering
The Cambridge Dictionary defines money laundering as follows:
“The crime of moving money that has been obtained illegally through banks and other businesses to make it seem as if the money has been obtained legally.”
United Nations state that the money laundered in one year ranges from $ 800 billion to $ 2 trillion.
The figure is equivalent to between 2% and 5% of global GDP.
The following information: is being distributed by INTERPOL to the general public:
“Money laundering is a component of other much more serious crimes such as drug trafficking, robbery with violence or extortion.
It is omnipresent and found in areas where it might least be expected, such as environmental crimes”.
All companies must enforce AML compliance due to the global rise in financial crimes, such as money laundering.
ReputationUP Coach tracks any illegal operation to protect your company from any public scandal.
Who investigates financial crime?
Many organizations around the world conduct investigations into financial crime.
Here are a few of them:
- Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN);
- INTERPOL;
- European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), of the European Commission;
- The Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
The mission of the FinCEN is to safeguard the financial system from illicit use, combat money laundering and its related crimes, including terrorism.
Furthermore, they promote national security through the strategic use of financial authorities and the collection, analysis, and dissemination of financial intelligence.
What do financial crime teams do?
The teams investigate and resolve financial crime issues.
Because of the severity of the cases, police forces worldwide are cooperating on a national and international level.
Financial crimes affect individuals and companies.
This criminal model has risen in importance in recent years as a result of technological advancements.
What is the impact of financial crime on a business?
Financial crime can affect individuals or companies.
Such acts have a psychological as well as an economic impact on individuals.
On the other hand, being involved in financial scandals has only negative consequences:
- Income reduction;
- Loss of trust on the part of employees, partners, and clients;
- Loss of business image, or even Online Reputation crisis;
- Increase in power due to competition;
- Impact on the financial system and economic development;
- Job loss;
- Social alarm.
As we can see from the preceding list, financial crime harms the company and the people who surround it: employees, clients, partners, and society as a whole.
Financial crime affects 47% of businesses, resulting in total losses of $ 1.45 trillion.
In this scenario, ReputationUP Coach is in action. Our team investigates fraudulent transactions and protects acompany’s financial reputation from public embarrassment.
ReputationUP Coach tracks down the final victim of financial crimes and provides the evidence to our clients.
Access to business records allows interested parties to analyze all data and discover prospective affiliates who hide assets, funds, and black money.
We can refer to anti-money laundering KYC (Know Your Customer) when looking for a specific client or partner. Thisprocess entails knowing the user’s identity, activities, and risk analysis.
What is the importance of financial crime regulations?
Financial regulatory compliance or financial compliance aim to prevent profitability and the multiplication of crimes.
Increase of offenses in recent years has led to the formation and survival of criminal organizations.
The accomplishment of these events has an impact on companies, individuals, and society as a whole.
Money laundering and other crimes jeopardize the financial system’s and stock market’s mechanisms.
The financial typology is at the center of the crimes as it is the only legal way to use illegal income.
Authorities use the illegal money trail to develop the police and judicial processes.
European Commission presented in July 2021 a package of legislative proposals in response to the gravity of these crimes.
“The objective is to strengthen the European Union’s anti-money laundering and counter the financing of terrorism.”
This document also calls for the creation of a new EU authority to fight money laundering.
Conclusions
A financial crime is an illegal activity committed with the intent of defrauding a company, individual or bank’s economy.
We have learned the most common types of financial crimes, who investigates them, and the impact on companies through this text.
From this article, we can draw the following conclusions:
- Financial scandals cause business crises by affecting their financial reputation.
- Money laundering is the most common financial crime.
- The impact of money laundering on world GDP ranges between 2% and 5%.
- Financial crime affects 47% of businesses, resulting in total losses of $ 1.45 trillion.
ReputationUP Coach is in charge of tracking down illegal operations and protecting the financial reputation of companies.