Australian police yesterday revealed they had cracked a major global money-laundering ring with operatives in more than 20 countries and funds syphoned off to groups reported to include Hezbollah.
The Australian Crime Commission said more than A$580 million (US$512 million) of drugs and assets had been seized, including A$26 million in cash, in a year-long sting codenamed Eligo targeting the offshore laundering of funds generated by outlaw motorcycle gangs, people-smugglers and others.
According to the commission, the operation had disrupted 18 serious and organized crime groups and singled out 128 individuals of interest in more than 20 countries, tapping information from agencies including the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
The full details of which countries had been involved were not revealed, but acting commission chief Paul Jevtovic said “the reality is that the Middle East and Southeast Asia have featured prominently.”
“Drug importations into Australia continue to be the main profit source by organized crime here in this country, but there is a range of other things, serious organized investment frauds, identity theft,” Jevtovic said.
Eligo saw 105 people arrested on 190 separate charges and resulted in the closure of three major clandestine methamphetamine labs and Australia’s largest-ever urban hydroponic cannabis hothouse in Sydney in November last year.
It was described as “one of the most successful money-laundering investigations in Australian law enforcement history” by the commission.
“The task force focused on high-threat money-laundering activities and, as a result, revealed a range of different crime types which has led to these extraordinary outcomes,” Australian Justice Minister Michael Keenan said.
“Seizing more than A$550 million worth of drugs and cash is a significant blow to the criminal economy,” he added.
Legitimate international cash wiring services were a major focus of the operation, with the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, the government’s anti-laundering agency, saying they had been identified as at “high risk of being exploited by serious and organized crime groups.”
A Fairfax media expose on the operation found criminals targeted foreign nationals and students in Australia awaiting remittances from overseas, hijacking the transaction by depositing dirty money to the payee and then taking the cash wired from offshore.
Fairfax said at least one of the exchange houses used in the Middle East and Asia delivered a cut from every dollar it laundered to Lebanon’s powerful Shiite movement and Syria ally Hezbollah, which is banned as a terrorist organization in Australia.
“It was just never-ending,” acting commission chief Col Blanch said. “We were regularly finding bags of $500,000 and $400,000.”
Eligo netted a record A$5.7 million single cash seizure in Sydney at the weekend — seven suitcases stuffed with bills uncovered in an apartment near the city’s airport.
A 58-year-old US citizen who recently arrived in Australia via Costa Rica has been charged with dealing with the proceeds of crime over the stash.
“This is one of Australia’s largest cash seizures,” federal police commissioner Tony Negus said.
The ACC is also monitoring the use of bitcoin, a so-called virtual crypto-currency generated by a complex computer algorithm.
Bitcoin made headlines last year when US authorities closed the Silk Road Web site after the currency was found being used to buy illegal drugs, forged documents, hacker tools and even the services of hit men.
The commission estimates that organized crime costs Australia A$10 billion to A$15 billion per year, with drugs, money laundering, fraud, firearms and high-tech cyberoffenses the major issues.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion