Azerbaijan’s anti-money-laundering investigators were among those who asked the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit for assistance and information last year, according to the unit’s annual report.
Azerbaijan has been at the centre of reports of money laundering and kickbacks involving high-ranking government officials in Malta and members of the state’s ruling elite.
Times of Malta had reported how a network of more than 50 companies and trusts secretly owned by Azerbaijan’s ruling elite used accounts at Pilatus Bank in Ta’ Xbiex to move millions of euros around Europe.
Sources have told the international collaborative initiative, the Daphne Project, that by 2016 more than 60 accounts, holding the majority of the bank’s €250 million deposits, were opened for the benefit of the children of senior political figures in Azerbaijan.
The use of cash also featured in cases linked to corruption
The FIAU’s 2017 report provides a list of countries that made requests for information to the intelligence unit as part of ongoing investigations.
It does not say what the request from Azerbaijan’s authorities was about and only adds that the FIAU responded to the request. No such requests for information were made from Malta to Azerbaijan in 2017.
A total of 185 requests for information were received from the FIAU’s international counterparts, with 175 replied to, the annual report says.
Italy filed the most requests, 42, and received 38 replies. Even the Vatican made a request for information about suspected money laundering last year.
The latest annual report of the anti-money-laundering agency provides a rare glimpse into the secretive world of financial crime.
The FIAU said a number of cases sent to the police for further investigation involved the use of domestic bank accounts, as well as the use of Maltese-registered companies to clean illicit funds.
The report says that 14 of the 34 cases sent to the police last year featured a Maltese-registered company, eight of which involved non-Maltese nationals.
In a number of these cases, the domestic companies were suspected of forming part of an international network used to launder the proceeds of fraud and Ponzi schemes, as well as illegal gambling, undeclared income, corruption and drug trafficking.
The FIAU report also shows how an increase in the use of investment services to launder money was noted last year. Three cases linked to usury and embezzlement were handed over to the police for further investigation.
The report further highlighted how the use of cash deposits to attempt to launder money was on the rise.
Cash deposits, which were not in line with the subject’s known financial profile and for which no explanation was provided, featured in 11 cases, which were all referred to the police for further investigation.
Around one in three of them was linked to fraud. However, the report added that the use of cash also featured in cases linked to corruption, drug trafficking and basic undeclared income.
The most common red flag indicators in these cases were the volume of deposits that were not in line with the person’s profile, as well as the failure to provide supporting documentation on the origin of the funds.