I know a fair bit about money laundering and not for reasons you think. I also know a few experts in legal fields surrounding money laundering.
Right now the media and almost everyone else has focussed on Owen Glenn and his fabulous evidence before the Privileges committee without thinking that trucking along sweetly in the background is the Serious Fraud Office investigations into New Zealand First and Winston Raymond Peters, 63, List MP of no fixed abode.
The media would do well to examine our money laundering laws and associated information, all conveniently located in one place at the Ministry of Justice website. Of particular note are the methods of money laundering.
It is acknowledged that their are three stages to money laundering;
- Hide: to reflect the fact that cash is often introduced to the economy via commercial concerns which may knowingly or not knowingly be part of the laundering scheme, and it is these which ultimately prove to be the interface between the criminal and the financial sector
- Move: clearly explains that the money launderer uses transfers, sales and purchase of assets, and changes the shape and size of the lump of money so as to obfuscate the trail between money and crime or money and criminal.
- Invest: the criminal spends the money: he/she may invest it in assets, or in his/her lifestyle.
Our money laundering laws are very broad-brush and almost certainly New Zealand First staffers are caught by these laws, certainly Brian Henry, Winston Raymond Peters, 63, List MP of no fixed abode, The trustees of the Spencer Trust including the previously un-named third trustee Roger McClay, the present and past presidents of New Zealand First including Dail jones and Doug Woolerton are in the firing line. It is not not a matter of if, but when the SFO puts the squeeze on these folk that the truth is going to come tumbling out.
Mark my words, people are going to jail and it will be our money laundering laws that put them there. Obfuscations about the exact locations of the funds merely add to the evidence that this was a wilful deception on hiding the source of funds. As soon as you change the appearance of the funds you commit an offence under the money launder laundering laws.
