UNODC celebrated yesterday the National Day for the Prevention of Money-laundering

Antenor Madruga, Gustavo Rodrigues, Rafel Franzini, Murilo Portugal and Ricardo Saadi  

Brasilia, October 30 2014 - The National Day for the Prevention of Money-Laundering was marked yesterday, October 29, by a seminar organized by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in partnership with the law firm Feldens Madruga.

The seminar brought together experts from the public and private sectors in order to promote a dialogue about trends in the regulation of money laundering. It also discussed the concept of the risk based approach in international standards (FATF, UN), the National Financial System, Capital Markets and Insurance.

"This event is a unique and valuable opportunity because it is not easy to bring together, in the same event, officials, supervisors and representatives of the banking sector as well as researchers in this field", said the Representative of the UNODC Liaison and Partnership Office in Brazil, Rafael Franzini.

Among the authorities attending the event were the Representative of the UNODC Liaison and Partnership Office in Brazil, Rafael Franzini, the attorney and partner at Feldens Madruga firm, Antenor Madruga, the Chairman of the Financial Activities Control (COAF), Antonio Gustavo, the director of the Department of Asset Recovery and International Legal Cooperation (DRCI) of Brazil, Ricardo Saadi and the President of Febraban, Murilo Portugal.

The risk-based approach is one of the most recent recommendations of the FATF-GAFI (International Financial Action Group) and allows countries to adopt more specific measures in areas where risks remain high or where implementation could be enhanced. Institutions should identify, evaluate and understand the risks of money laundering and the financing of terrorism that they face, in order to take appropriate measures to mitigate such risks. The risk-based approach allows sectors to adopt, within the requirements of FATF-GAFI, a more flexible set of procedures to direct their resources more effectively and implement preventive actions that are proportional to the nature of the risks, concentrating their efforts in the most efficient way .

Further Information:

Money laundering is the process by which the criminals disguise resources obtained in criminal activities by making such proceeds appear to have derived from a legitimate source. This practice often involves multiple transactions used to disguise the origin of financial assets and allow them to be used without compromising the criminals. Concealment is therefore the basis for all laundering operation involving money from a predicate offense.

In the last two decades, money laundering and related crimes - including, drug trafficking, corruption, kidnapping and terrorism - have become crimes which impacts cannot be measured at the local scale. If in the past this practice was restricted to certain regions, its pernicious effects now spread beyond national borders, undermining financial systems and impairing economic activities.

Because of the clandestine nature of money laundering, it is difficult to estimate the total volume of laundered funds that circulate internationally. Analysis techniques available involve the measurement of the volume of trade in illegal activities such as trafficking in drugs, weapons or fraud.

For this reason, the issue became the central object of countless discussions around the world. Heads of states and governments as well as international organizations, began to devote more attention to the issue. However, the majority of people do not think about the severity of the problem, mainly because money laundering seems distant from our reality.

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