VietNamNet Bridge – The Internet has been exploited by crimes to wash dirty money. The Vietnamese police have discovered and taken investigations against the behaviors. However, the current legal loopholes make it difficult to charge the money laundry on the crimes.

Cao Van Loc from the Ministry of Public Security’s PC46, the agency in charge of fighting against high technology crimes, said the criminals nowadays tend to use Internet and high technologies to commit crimes, which puts big difficulties for the investigation agencies.

According to Loc, the police have discovered many cases where foreign criminals chose Vietnam as the place to wash their money. The criminals sent messages to mobile phones or emails of some people, informing them that they won prizes or got inheritance from someone. If the message receivers contact the message senders, the senders would try to persuade the “quarries” to join their money laundry “game.”

The Vietnamese were told to open bank accounts, to which the criminals would remitt money to. For example, if the criminals remitted VND3 billion to an account, the owner of the accounts would withdraw money from the account and remit the money back to another account owned by the criminals. As such, the money could be washed.

In reward for the money remittance, the Vietnamese would get a “service fee.” In this case, for example, they withdrew VND3 billion from the account and just had to remit VND 2 billion back, while they could pocket VND1 billion, and the criminals would have VND2 billion in “clean money.”

In fact, the money the criminals tried to wash was the dirty one, which means the money earned from illegal affairs, or the money they hacked from bank accounts.

The criminals in Vietnam have also been trying to have money washed abroad to enjoy overnight interest rates.

“A” company, which has business relation with foreign “B” company, remits money from Vietnam to “B” in Europe or the US. Due to the time zone differences, the money would go through the banking systems in some different countries.

For example, the money would go from a bank in Vietnam to Hong Kong, then to a country in Caribbean area before reaching out to the “B” company’s account in the US. In case of the currency shortage, banks would pay overnight interest rates during the process of the money remittance through different countries due to the time zone differences.

In these cases, the sums of money earned from the overnight interest rates could be very high of up to billions of dong a night. The sums of money are likely to go to the pockets of the individuals who work at banks.

“The investigation agencies now try to track down who have pocketed the sums of money,” Loc said.

Regarding the Liberty Reverse case, the national Vietnam Television has informed the conclusion of the Ministry of Public Security’s C45 Agency that the case relates to the “virtual money” (e-wallet) which was for the first time dealt with in Vietnam.

C45 said LR money could be the “last destination point” of the criminals’ process of money laundering. The criminals plan to wash the illegal money they earned from trading the information about credit cards, making counterfeit credit cards, football betting or stealing merchandise, then to make payment among them with LR money which would be later converted into Vietnam dong or foreign currencies.

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