Warning on gold laundering

I thought Australian real estate was now the preferred choice of Chinese money launderers

 

Central planners may push government into laws that seem to ban gold - but they can't be everywhere to prevent individuals taking gold as payment.

 

The biggest issue With gold as payment is that it is really not practical and there is not enough of it.

At today's exchange you would need 25kg to buy an average Sydney house.

How would you pay for $9 maccas meal, 2 milligram of gold

For gold to take over the worlds currency would it need to be $1million an ounce actually maybe more.

 

there is enough silver and gold around, but not for everybody

it is always to acquire under value assets in particulars oversold or being suppressed

anything cost lesser than a dime could be taken care by copper

the internet of things continue to give us all sorts of value

a doctor can guide another to operate on another human from a distance

all ages will always be golden

 

I agree when we start talking about lower value items. But still Impractical, unless we are talking gold standard.

 

At 10,000 an ounce we solve all problems...especially mine. LOL.

 

depends what that 10,000 will buy. a beer?

 

Look again at Julie's article. Entities have found gold as a good way to disguise wealth. They melt down gold in one country,
then move it to another country. It seems to work as payment at the destination country. The people doing it, kept doing it as it worked.
Also, remember how Iran was exposed earlier in the year for trading oil for smuggled gold sent via Dubai and Turkey.

There's enough evidence that gold is a handy way to secretly pay across borders (for big payment sums).

By the way, Silver would partly do the same as gold (ie proper monetary status, plus easily melted down), but at present values, it is much bulkier
(for a given payment amount), so less discreet on the airplane.

 

In Australia they can just launder the funds through real estate as this is actually facilitated by the government. The difficult bit is getting the cash into Australia first.

 

Apparently banks are the easiest way to launder money.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/11/hsbc-bank-us-money-laundering

... At least $881m in drug trafficking money was laundered throughout the bank's accounts.

"HSBC is being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight and worse," said Breuer, "that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars..."

 

A helpful bank assisted in a huge narco-money electronic transfer.
I see one big downside - electronic transfers are trace-able electronically.
It's easier and cheaper to data trace than physically trace movement of assets (eg gold).
That is, unless someone with knowledge can make bank transfers untrace-able.

 

I think it's probably easier to launder big amounts through the banks than by using gold or bitcoin.

For example, every bitcoin transaction can be traced, and gold requires physical transportation (making large transfers difficult, especially over borders).

But a hacker/bad-banker could move tens of millions of dollars overseas with little oversight. (e.g. $81 million in Bangladeshi funds stolen from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/04/09/1571000/us-interested-81-m-money-laundering-case

 

But, by definition, money transfer into an account overseas is recorded and so is traceable.

Also, as the article explains - US authorities could act quickly when discovering the problem:

"A total of $951 million was to be transferred to RCBC, but banking authorities in New York stopped the remittance of $870 million when they became suspicious."
(quoting the Philippine Star)

Technically, as they know where the money went, the $81 million could be recouped. However, co-operation with the Philippines is the main limiting factor.

 

Even when something can be recorded and traced, it often still cannot be recovered.

E.g. "Merchants in the United States are losing approximately $190 billion a year to credit card fraud"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnsh...annual-fraud-scam-more-on-jumio/#68fbf9957db4

Gold, Cash and Bitcoin are often vilified as tools of money laundering, terrorist financing, or other criminal activities - BUT in reality most crimes happen through the banking system (especially via credit card fraud, hacks, etc).

 

It's not that difficult.

You get your secret Samoan registered corporation based in Hong Kong to invoice your Chinese business for...accounting services/legal services/intellectual property royalties/a package containing a $60 Kindle reader valued at $100k/whatever.

Money goes from China to HK.

You get the company owned by your cousin in Australia to invoice the Samoan/HK company for some similarly innocuous thing at a ridiculously inflated value.

Money goes from HK to Australia.

Australian company buys a house.

You cousin sells you options in the company for $10 that allow you to buy 100% of the shares.

You pay the $10 and buy the company that owns the house.

You de-register the company and everything it owns (the house) is divested to the owner (you).

You now own the house.

 

one can help build African nation, money go to USA and for distribution
no house get involved :lol:

 

All kinds of tax issues there. On sale of the $10 options (which are not at market value due to the companies net assets) there's s CGT event (it's related to real Australian property so tax is payable here). There's a few other issues as well.

One of the questions ASIC asks prior to deregistation is does the company have assets over $1,000 or any liabilities. I don't think you can deregister a company that has more than $1,000 in assets so it would need to be sold from the company prior.

That seems like a mine field that involves the ATO and ASIC.

 

Just fly suitcases of cash into the country on your private jet:

 

He's been at the last five Wednesday meets!