Eighteen Mexicans Who Posed As Journalists from Mexico's Biggest TV
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Criminals posing as Mexican journalists found guilty of drug trafficking and money laundering - 19 December 2012 Eighteen Mexicans who posed as journalists from Mexico’s biggest TV network, Televisa, have been found guilty of organised crime by a court in Nicaragua. They were arrested in August 2012 as they tried to cross into Nicaragua in six vans, some painted with Televisa logos. They said that they had been sent to cover a high-profile murder trial but could not explain the US$9.2 million [about £5.6 million] in cash that police found in their vehicles. Televisa said that it had not sent any journalists to Nicaragua to cover the trial of people accused of involvement in the 2011 murder of Argentine folk singer Facundo Cabral. Judge Edgard Altamirano said that the seventeen men and one woman (allegedly the leader of the group) were guilty of drug trafficking, money laundering and organised crime: “The way they stashed the cash in the vehicles with the Televisa logos, the large amount of money, that’s the typical way members of organised crime act.” The defendants will be sentenced on 18 January 2013, with prosecutors seeking the maximum of thirty years. Money launderer loses human rights appeal - 19 December 2012 James Kinloch, who claimed that police had violated his human rights, has lost an appeal against a money laundering conviction. Kinloch was jailed for 30 months in 2010 over his role in a scheme to launder about £150,000 through bureaux de change, along with his son and another man. Kinloch claimed that police surveillance prior to his arrest was a violation of his right to respect for his private life, but the UK Supreme Court has ruled that he was not entitled to keep the criminal nature of his activity private. In a written ruling, Lord Reed said: “This court [has to consider] whether Mr Kinloch had a reasonable expectation of privacy while he was in public view as he moved between his car and the block of flats where he lived and engaged in his other activities that day in places that were open to the public. There is nothing to suggest that he could reasonably have had any such expectation of privacy. He engaged in these activities in places where he was open to public view by neighbours, by persons in the street or by anyone else who happened to be watching what was going on. He took the risk of being seen and of his movements being noted down. The criminal nature of what he was doing, if that was what it was found to be, was not an aspect of his private life that he was entitled to keep private. Since there was no breach of Mr Kinloch’s rights by the police when they carried out their observations, it follows that there cannot have been any breach of his right to a fair trial when the prosecution led evidence of the results of those observations.” Husband and wife jailed for organising illegal immigration - 19 December 2012 Arya Bina has been sentenced to nine years in prison for facilitating illegal immigration. Bina was the self-proclaimed leader of an Iranian opposition political party in exile – the United Iranian Party (UIP) – and was paid substantial sums of money by people wishing to reach the UK from the continent. Bina arranged for the migrants to be given false identity and travel documents, and himself ravelled to Europe on more than one occasion to assist migrants on the final leg of their journey. Although neither Bina nor his wife Monir Asemani had any record of paid employment, they were able to drive BMW and Mercedes cars, and Asemani had set up a beauty salon. Between them, they operated at least 21 bank accounts – none in the name of the UIP – and between 2007 and 2011 these accounts received unexplained payments in excess of £500,000. Asemani was given a two-and- a-half-year prison sentence. SOCA’s Regional Head of Investigations, Paul Jenkins, said: “Arya Bina made a career of breaking the immigration laws of the UK, funding the comfortable lifestyle he and his wife enjoyed by taking large amounts of money from migrants.” Five more jail sentences in forced labour case - 19 December 2012 Five more members of the Connors traveller family have been found guilty of conspiracy to require a person to carry out forced or compulsory labour between April 2010 and March 2011, and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. William Connors, his wife Breda, their sons John and James and their son-in-law Miles Connors beat their victims and forced them to work for as little as £5 a day, in Gloucestershire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. They would pick up the men – often homeless drifters or addicts – to work for them as labourers. The victims lived in poor conditions in caravans on traveller sites while they worked for the Connors’ paving and patio businesses. Some of the men – referred to as “dossers” by the Connors – had worked for the family for nearly two decades. William was described by some of the workers as the “drill sergeant, big boss or the daddy” while his wife was the “banker”, collecting the money from the forced workers’ state benefits. Some of the victims were also ordered by the family to perform tasks, such as emptying the buckets used as toilets by the family. Many were beaten, hit with broom handles, belts, a rake and shovel, and punched and kicked. On one occasion a worker had a hosepipe pushed down his throat and they were often made to strip for a “hosing down session” with freezing water. The men were given so little food that they resorted to scavenging from dustbins at supermarkets; they also salvaged clothing from bins and used a bucket or woodland as a toilet. Meanwhile, the Connors lived in luxury caravans fitted with top-of-the-range kitchens and flat-screen televisions, took holidays in Tenerife and Mexico and drove cars such as a Mercedes and a Rolls Royce. They bought a caravan park for more than £500,000 and had a similar amount of money in bank accounts. William Connors was jailed for 6½ years, Breda for two years and three months, John for four years and Miles for three years; James was sentenced to three years in a young offenders’ institution. Financial Services Bill gets Royal Assent - 19 December 2012 The Financial Services Bill has received Royal Assent and thereby has become the Financial Services Act. The Act will come into force on 1 April 2013 and: gives the Bank of England responsibility for protecting and enhancing financial stability abolishes the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and creates instead the Financial Policy Committee, the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority empowers authorities to look beyond ‘tick-box’ compliance and fosters a regulatory culture of judgment, expertise and proactive supervision. The Government will bring forward secondary legislation early in 2013, in advance of the launch of the new authorities. HSBC in Argentina fined £3.75 million for AML failings - 16 December 2012 HSBC Bank Argentina SA has been fined 30 million pesos [about £3.75 million] for failing to report suspicious transactions. Specifically, the Argentine subsidiary of global banking group HSBC failed to disclose a US$3 million transaction by a bread bakers’ association, in what regulatory officials say was a clear-cut case of money laundering. Officials said the sum said should have raised red flags at HSBC, given the group’s relatively modest “profile”: “The amount of transactions investigated was 5,800% higher than the amount of total income declared by the association for the years 2005 to 2006.” California woman fined for laundering political contribution - 13 December 2012 Ana Maria Gonzalez Ibarra has been fined US$10,000 [about £6,200] for contributing $600 to a mayoral campaign in other people’s names. Ibarra – who worked at a Macy’s department store in Chula Vista, California as a saleswoman – contributed $300 to councilman Steve Castaneda’s unsuccessful 2010 mayoral campaign in her own name, and then asked two friends to each make a donation of $300 for which she reimbursed them. She was fined by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) for laundering money in order to exceed the $300 local contribution limit in place at the time. According to FPPC documents: “Making a contribution in another person’s name is [serious] because it denies the public of information about where a candidate receives his or her financial support.” California law mandates that “no contribution shall be made, directly or indirectly, by any person in a name other than the name by which such person is identified for legal purposes,” in order to ensure that voters are fully informed. Cayman Islands leader arrested during corruption investigation - 11 December 2012 McKeeva Bush, the premier (head of government) of the Cayman Islands, has been arrested as part of a corruption investigation. He has been charged with misuse of a government credit card and importing explosive materials, and is currently detained in police custody. Bush has been in power since his United Democratic Party (UDP) won general elections in 2009, and was also leader of the islands’ government between November 2001 and May 2005. As well as being premier, Bush is also minister of finance, tourism and development. HSBC to pay US$1.9 billion for AML failings - 11 December 2012 HSBC has confirmed that it is to pay the US authorities $1.9 billion [about £1.2 billion] to settle claims that the UK-based bank helped launder money belonging to drug cartels and nations under US sanctions.