Money Laundering Typologies in Serbia
Since its establishment in 2002, the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering (APML) has been working on the development of the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) system.
Besides enhancing the institutional capacity of the APML as the central, but by all means not the only authority dealing with the preventing and detecting money laudnering, AML/CFT system development entails constant training and education of all its elements. Money laundering methods are constantly changing as criminals try to conceal and disguise in various ways the illicit origin of money, using weaknesses of certain sectors of a specific country. It is for the purposes of analysis of the experience gained so far about the money laundering methods and techniques in Serbia that the typologies development project in the Republic of Serbia was started.
The project is a result of a long-standing fruitful cooperation between the APML and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
A working group was established for this purpose consisting of a number of APML’s staff members. Economists and lawyers by education, they deal with various AML responsibilities in their daily work. Some of them have been involved in legislative drafting, the others have a long-standing experience in accounting and auditing or in detection of money laundering in capital market.
The typologies are divided into 8 sections and they indicate specific features of money laundering in our country through different sectors: banking, auditing, accounting, money exchange, insurance, attorneys, as well as in capital market and real estate sector. Each section contains a description of the state of play in a sector, possible ways of abusing the sector for money laundering purposes, as well as trends and/or techniques most likely to be used for money laundering purposes.
The purpose of these typologies is of educational nature; namely, they are to show to the obligors, ranging from banks, exchange offices and other financial institutions, all the way to real estate agents, accountants, auditors and attorneys, all possible methods of money laundering in the sectors, where vulnerabilities lie, and what forms of apparently legal operations should be under closest scrutiny.
The Project will have been finished by the end of 2011, with the Typologies published in the Serbian and English languages.
