Laundering money through the Cayman Islands

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Associated Press of Pakistan, November 3, 2009 – Chairman of the Senate Farooq H Naek Tuesday called for additional efforts to freeze terrorist assets and enact legislation to criminalize terrorist financing and to improve information sharing between financial intelligence units. “Through effective policy-making and legislative interventions, national institutions can be enabled to effectively cope with terror-related challenges such as the flow of money into the wrong hands.

Another effective intervention can be necessary legislation to criminalize not only money-laundering but terrorist financing as well,” said the Chairman of the Senate speaking as chief guest at a judicial workshop, ‘Parliament’s Role in Combating the Financing of Terrorism’.

He said, an informal money transfer system can be vulnerable to be used by terrorist and terrorist organizations. Likewise, laundering money through front organizations such as charities, offshore, companies and trusts and areas like the Cayman Islands, Jersey, Liechtenstein and Isle of Man provide a way for groups to transfer cash from legitimate causes to terrorist ones.


Funds diverted through network of Cayman Islands companies

NEW YORK, USA: Business Day, November 3, 2009 – Helmut Kiener, the K1 Group hedge fund founder under arrest in Germany on suspicion of fraud, is seeking to sell his beach front home in Delray Beach, Florida, for 23m to repay investors, it has emerged.

Kiener owned the house through Miami-based Consistent Income, whose managing member was Stefan Seuss, sources briefed on the matter said on condition of anonymity, because the probe was not yet complete.

Seuss was arrested in Miami last week in a Federal Bureau of Investigation money-laundering sting and is tied to an international investigation of Kiener. He may have duped Barclays, owner of Absa, out of as much as 220m and BNP Paribas out of 60m, according to the warrant for his arrest. Funds were diverted through a network of Cayman Islands-based companies, the warrant shows.

The money was used to buy two aircraft and a helicopter, and some was allegedly used to acquire two properties in Miami, helping Kiener support a “luxury lifestyle”, the warrant says. A Cayman Islands liquidator was selling the property, said the sources , but would not give details about the investors.