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Squillions: How money laundering won

lrb.co.uk

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Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#21

Post by protocolture »

throwaway290 wrote: post #14
yieldcrv wrote: post #5

The state's ability to track and criminalize people based on financial behaviors through deputized financial intermediaries is new, and temporary. Outside of this social graph, where private cash transactions still exist, the state lacks power and relies on stigmatizing cash ownership, consumption, movement. This stigma is largely successful and ubiquitous but inconsequential to anybody that matters or has a lawyer o…

Where cash is stigmatized? I haven't seen such a place except PRC. Most people want government to be able to seize assets of baddies. It is possible with cash, it is possible with banks, hardly possible with crypto. The technology to scam people at scale with untraceable emoney is not everybody's cup of tea. Speaking from a country that invaded its neighbor, for our government (as well as north korea) it is lovely to…

>Most people want government to be able to seize assets of baddies.

I dont, not while they get to decide who the baddies are.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#22

Post by arttaboi »

Here's an anecdotal thought: AML laws surprisingly work well to discourage offline transactions by tax-paying citizens, helping maximize tax reporting and improve tax collection. As a result, governments continue to strengthen and expand laws in that direction.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#23

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

Gigachad wrote: post #13
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #2

In Italy there is a very aggressive law against money laundering: if you withdraw more than 1k cash, it triggers a call to the police. I know it's the same if you do it over multiple days. I think it has been relaxed a little bit later on, but in Italy everybody does the "I'll charge you X less without VAT" (which is 23% in Italy, I should point out), so this is also fighting that.

That wouldn't help in the situations described in the article. For example where individuals buy drugs with small amounts of cash, then that cash is used to buy things like luxury watches and iphones, then those items are taken overseas and sold. Seemingly the only effective way to solve this would be to ban purchasing highly resellable items with cash and requiring that cash to be deposited in to the system first.

You cannot have a transaction in cash of that size. Loundring is about converting the dirty cash back to normal money, but the idea is to force you to go through a bank

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#24

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

ExpertAdvisor01 wrote: post #8
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean it's illegal, or that they'll just come knocking to investigate? I wonder if the "it's my money, I can withdraw it if I want" argument is good enough to send them on their way? (in addition to $1,000 being such a small amount as to be less-than-trivial when it comes to the overall problem of money laundering).

I think the limit is 10k and withdrawals over 1k get bundled. If you hit the limit you get reported to the Unità di Informazione Finanziaria (Financial intelligence unit) and what they do is under their discretion.

Oh so it was raised back to a higher amount

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#25

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

HDBaseT wrote: post #12
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #2

In Italy there is a very aggressive law against money laundering: if you withdraw more than 1k cash, it triggers a call to the police. I know it's the same if you do it over multiple days. I think it has been relaxed a little bit later on, but in Italy everybody does the "I'll charge you X less without VAT" (which is 23% in Italy, I should point out), so this is also fighting that.

You mean they implemented laws under the guise of "money laundering". They just want to track what you spend your money on, that's step one. Step two is to restrict what you can spend your money on, although this is a partial side effect of part 1.

Actually the privacy legislation in Italy is pretty strong. With the gdpr, banks have more challenges to do what they do with data in the US. Government might be tracking everybody, the goal of the law for sure is that.

It's hard to say what happens with all of that.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#26

Post by caspper69 »

dataflow wrote: post #20
glitchc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is yes. You can buy cars, trucks and tractors for cash. The more expensive the car, the easier it often is. Luxury cars in particular are routinely bought and sold for cash.

> Luxury cars in particular are routinely bought and sold for cash. Cash ? As in hundred dollar bills?

Yes, duffel bags full.

But it doesn't take too many cash purchases that are not inline with your tax returns before somebody is going to start snooping around.

edit: although sometimes, a lot longer than one might expect.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#27

Post by dwd »

I always thought the TV show Ozark was fairly accurate in it's depiction of money laundering. The family would buy a small business that they could inject cash and cook the books with fake sales.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#28

Post by margalabargala »

glitchc wrote: post #19
laszlojamf wrote: post #18

" Bullough gives the example of a Mexican drug dealer who smuggles product across the border to the US. The drug in question would once have been marijuana, then cocaine, and is now likely to be fentanyl, which is cheap to manufacture and easy to conceal. The drugs are sold in the US for cash, which is used to buy, say, agricultural equipment. " Wouldn't the person buying the tractor in the US for $$$ have to show wh…

The short answer is yes. You can buy cars, trucks and tractors for cash. The more expensive the car, the easier it often is. Luxury cars in particular are routinely bought and sold for cash.

Luxury cars are frequently bought outright without debt, yes.

Literal cash, as in actual paper pieces of money, is not a common medium to do so.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#30

Post by cyberax »

photios wrote: post #29

In this day and age "money laundering" just means "not bending over and letting the state tax you to oblivion". TFA is just scare mongering. People need to learn about Bitcoin.

> People need to learn about Bitcoin.

Indeed. Bitcoin is now a major player in the money laundering business. NFTs are so much better than fake pocelain!

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