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Excited to share that the ABC documentary on counterfeits where RisikoTek has been featured in its capacity as the Anti Money Laundering expert is out now!
The documentary was aired live on Australian ABC TV last night at prime time. As per the producers, the show was one of the most watched in Australia and the online piece was the most read in the country!
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Dear Esteemed Readers,
We are delighted to present the inaugural edition of RisikoNews, marking the commencement of an ongoing series of informative updates. Our objective in this endeavour is to disseminate the most current news, fostering constructive dialogue within our community, with the ultimate aim of refining and presenting enhanced solutions for your benefit. In the current landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) has gained ubiquity, serving both as a valuable tool and, regrettably, occasionally falling victim to misuse. Given this context, we believe it would be advantageous to acquaint you with our ongoing initiatives within this sphere. Following your consideration of the information provided below, if the "ATTENTION! project" resonates with you and arouses your interest, we cordially invite you to express your keenness to engage further. Subsequently, we would be delighted to coordinate a follow-up meeting, during which we can engage in a comprehensive discussion regarding the prospective avenues for your active participation and valuable contributions in this endeavour. *** ATTENTION! Building an AI-empowered system for the detection and persecution of illicit trade Illicit trade is a problem of massive scale. Smuggling, counterfeiting, mis-invoicing, and money laundering deprives states and societies of taxes, infringes on product and brand rights, compromises product safety – and finances crime. Global Financial Integrity found a gap of US$8.7 trillion in reported trade that ultimately flow into criminal ventures, yet the detection rate is near zero. Currently there are very few tools available to detect complex, large scale illicit trade and its perpetrators. Investigations are time- and cost intensive. Law enforcement often relies on tip-offs while customs must do random checks. Globally we are lacking a science-based understanding of how illicit transactions can be detected, what patterns they are following and how the networks behind them can be traced and persecuted. The ATTENTION! project will analyse the largest trade databases available globally together with extensive Web content and metadata. ATTENTION! will develop Machine Learning models to understand and detect patterns of illicit trade activity and to expose the perpetrators and their support systems. The trade activity of over forty countries over six years will be analysed comprehensively to ensure that all known smuggling methods such as co-mingling are included in the AI and ML models. The Web will be scanned for identified patterns to find new cases and detect the networks of perpetrators and their ecosystems integrating a vast array of 3rd party data sources. Ultimately, the result of ATTENTION! will be a cloud software system that will empower companies and authorities to better detect illicit trade and proceed against its agents. For more information, see: https://attention-project.eu/en/ *** We trust that you found our inaugural issue to be engaging and informative. We highly value your insights and input, which we warmly invite you to share with us. As we possess an array of resources at our disposal, we are eager to tailor our forthcoming editions to align with your specific interests. Allow us to provide a brief overview of some of the tools at our disposal, which we can utilise to craft content that resonates with your preferences or propose something new: AMALIA is an easy to use automated intelligence analytics software built for Enhanced Client Due Diligence and Case Investigations. Space Detective is a unique tool which lets you monitor your areas of interest using satellite imagery. The Trade Data Analysis Dashboard allows investigators to visualise and derive insights from shipping data. Please do not hesitate to specify your preferences or suggest a particular subject that you would like us to explore in our next edition. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us tailor our content to meet your expectations and interests effectively. Thanks for reading it, have a nice day & Kind regards!  Recently in one of the biggest money laundering probes in Singapore, the police arrested several individuals involved in laundering money from overseas crimes and forgery. Read on in this informative article, as our CEO Elke Biechele talks to TODAY about the mechanics and perils of money laundering and why Singapore is so attractive to money launderers.
https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/explainer-what-money-laundering-and-how-does-singapore-guard-against-it-2235126 Many fans of the western movie genre will be familiar with the 1960’s hit The Magnificent Seven. It even has a 2016 version starring every major motion picture star you can think of (Denzel Washington, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, etc..). This classic tale tells of how a band of 7 hired guns save a town from a huge marauding gang that is exploiting and terrorizing a small town.
Insight Crime recently produced an incredible piece on how Mexican organized crime uses the same methods of intimidation and violence, to force entire States of Mexico to buy tobacco products only from them. By doing so, choice of cigarettes and other tobacco products are simply blocked from the market. So long to free market access! The corporate black hat wearing bandidos in this instance are Tobacco International Holdings (TIH) and Burley & Virginia Tobaco Company. This new “Tobacco Cartel'' uses some pretty extreme “sales” methods to grow their business and it is no doubt from the influence of their partners in business the one and only Cartel de Jalisco Nuevo Generacion (CJNG). “An Offer You Can’t Refuse” If you were wondering how small shop owners in Mexico were being terrorized, well here is how. CJNG, seemingly with the consent of corrupt government officials, use the same market grabbing techniques that they use in the illegal drugs trade – overwhelming intimidation and when needed violence. It’s the only technique that they are familiar with, and that is unfortunate for the already traumatized population of Mexico. On the retail sales side of things the violent methods are well documented. Men dressed as police show up and tell the owner to destroy all cigarettes that they have. Once all that is destroyed the shop owner is forced to buy cigarettes only from the cartel. In 2018 when there was an investigation done on this by Milenio, they cited 300 cases of this intimidation. The poor shop owners were told, “if you sell again, you will be killed.” This horrifying practice was further demonstrated in Michoacan State according to reports in Milenio with instances of actual kidnapping! Who’s the Sheriff in this Town? The Sheriff sadly is part of the scheme it seems. There is evidence of links between the Mexican Attorney General’s Office, TIH and CJNG. The more obviously linked individuals are Carlos Cedano Filippini and Genaro Cedano Filippini, both brothers formerly worked under the Attorney General's Office -which was then named Procuraduría General de la República (PGR)-. Carlos as well as others in the Filippini family are employed in various capacities in TIH. On the surface nothing fishy, but the same family has a criminal record of involvement with organized crime. Carlos himself has been in prison in the U.S. for organized crime offenses. So, when it comes to calling the cops for help? Remember that shop owner intimidation came from people dressed as police? Maybe these “cartel agents” were not genuinely police, but the message is clear. Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire Cigarettes may not gather as much passion for public action as other products. In Mexico there have been several studies online that show overall the smoking rates of the public in decline. That said, organized crime has changed the rules across the board when it comes to cigarettes. On top of the monopolization of cigarette selling outlets, they’ve also worked on the verticals using the same criminal techniques that work for drug trafficking. Cigarette smoking decline is linked heavily with increased government taxation policies. Tax more? People lower their demand because the price of the luxury goes up. Organized crime uses smuggling to evade import taxes. That allows them to sell cheaper and at the same time weakens law enforcement budgets. In the Insight Crime article, that illegal volume has jumped from 2% in 2011 to 19% of cigarettes consumed today! It’s a win-win scenario for TIH, Burley & Virginia Tobaco Company and CJNG. Unfortunately it’s a disastrous result for communities and the government programs that need tax money for their programs. This is not small money. An indication of the scale of imports being smuggled is clearly illustrated in the case of Jose Francisco Guerra (of Victor M. Guerra Inc.) of Texas. In January of 2020 police stopped a truck full of cigarettes without the tax stamp put on the cigarettes en route to Mexico. That breaks U.S. law, but it also shows that none of these 17 million cigarettes en route were going to pay a peso of Mexican taxes. Police in the U.S. later seized an additional 400 million cigarettes from two warehouses controlled by Victor M. Guerra Inc.. In this instance, the US authorities were able to monitor the in and out of goods from the bonded warehouse effectively. They were able to prevent the sale of cigarettes into Mexico that if done legally would have garnered over USD 10 million in taxes for Mexico. As mentioned above the illegal smuggled untaxed amount of cigarettes in Mexico as a whole is basically one in five. An Oxford Economics study supported that and compiled a total damage of lost tax revenues in Mexico of 13.5 billion pesos (nearly USD 718 million). When you consider the number of doctors (over 139,000) and teachers (over 175,000) that could be paid by this lost revenue - the loss to the people of Mexico is staggering. Cigarettes are just one of the products being smuggled and sold into Mexico tax free as well. Organized crime moving into seemingly legitimate businesses is not new. It affords ways to make money, launder drug money, get loans even and in many ways can offer a way out from the violent drug trade. Cigarettes could however just be the start. As the success of unfair business practices are rewarded, it only makes sense to expand into new industries. Before long Mexico could find itself to be the world’s largest narco state. Can Mexico come up with its own “magnificent seven” to tackle this? Don’t look to Hollywood to sort this one out. The Mexican people need some heroes to step up!  RisikoTek links up with the Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG) and the British and European community in an effort to increase enforcement and speed up results for investigations into counterfeiting. What better way to do so than by joining one of its most active anti-counterfeiting organizations!
The ACG was founded 1980 in the United Kingdom. It is an international association that is respected as a world leader in fighting against the global trade in counterfeit goods. As a not-for-profit trade association, it has been able to grow its membership to cover over 3,000 of the world’s most prestigious brands. The ACG deliverables for its members are:
RisikoTek’s experience with working on Chinese anti-counterfeit operations in our region provides the UK and Europe with an experienced and solid partner in Asia to tackle counterfeiting in a much more robust manner. We aid brands and law enforcement to stamp out the manufacturing of counterfeit products along with the enabling network. By accepting RisikoTek as a member, British and European brands can now have even greater access to an Asian expert. Our technological edge for investigation is augmented by our multi-lingual investigation talent. This can allow for better penetration into Asian sources of information not intelligible to many traditional investigation firms in the West. It also helps to be working on Asia time! We have great aspirations for this exciting collaboration. Let’s all work together to stamp out these illicit markets together.  It has been just over three months since our kickoff event with our partners and it’s been a great journey so far! Barbara Lira, Product Manager of RisikoTek, says, “this project is a challenging one, but everyone is eager to make it work”. Eye on the PrizeUsing technology to detect illegal trade without the thousands of hours used today for investigation will speed up interdiction operations and speed up the destruction of illegal networks. AI basically holds a possibility to increase the insights that investigators already have. AI can go beyond the criminal techniques that we know from history and possibly start to detect new suspicious activity before it becomes historical.
No doubt to start with know-how and experience of investigation is a must to make any technology work in the real world. Just as necessary is to combine experience with technological development. This is where RisikoTek comes in as a valued partner. RisikoTek has been combining investigation needs with technology into award winning software platforms like AMALIA. They have further increased technological tools for use by investigators over years since its founding. This is early days for a 3 year project, but there is a keen spirit shown in the teams so far. The door is always open for more industry involvement as well. If you are a German business that has experienced counterfeiting and you do have information on how it was done, then please reach out to RisikoTek to see if you can join as an industry partner to ATTENTION! Germany is supporting many worthy projects with the purpose of securing a fair market place and a vigilant investigation environment for businesses. See other tech programs the Ministry is supporting by going here. Elke Biechele Presents the Marriage of Tech and Investigation for The Law Society of Singapore.5/10/2022  Educating the legal and law enforcement community on the latest investigation tools is a mission that RisikoTek has much experience with. Over the years RisikoTek has spoken at universities, business seminars and even provided workshops for Interpol.
September 29th afforded the latest opportunity in RisikoTek’s quest to make a difference. The Law Society of Singapore hosted a 3 hour long webinar event centered on the topic of anti-money laundering (AML) legislation and investigation. This topic is critical for the legal establishment. Recently there have been several prosecutions which not just target the organized crime behind the money laundering schemes, but also law firms, banks and other financial institutions that are not performing enhanced due diligence when signs were there to do so (RisikoTek has posted several examples on social media). There are fines being levied, and in some instances lawyers go to jail or worse!
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