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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (2501)	10/3/2001 9:14:52 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

No.. to your son?... certainly not anything I can imagine. But there may be some obscure banking statute this guy might be breaking because he's charging you a fee, which is a business... and probably not paying taxes, or keeping audit records of the transactions. But if you sent $10,000 in two $5,000 separate installments to the same non-related individual within a certain period of time, the Feds might be able to construe that as structuring... It all really depends on who the money is going to (like your son's college allowance?), and if that person is the final recipient of the monetary transfer... It would be complex and no prosecutor in his right mind who would push such a case unless they possessed some strong evidence that we're talking big money here... ($100,000+) Hawk

To: FaultLine who wrote (2501)	10/3/2001 10:46:33 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 281500

I don't understand the hawala network, but I don't see how using it to forward money to your son in another country is a crime, per se, if your intentions were innocent. Money laundering consists of three basic types of activities. The criminal intent of money laundering is facilitating other criminal activity. The way it is done is by trying to make the transaction look legitimate, taking "dirty money" and making it look "clean." The three illegal activities are: 1. Trying to hide money that is used in illegal activity or the product of illegal activity in order to promote the illegal activity. 2. Trying to conceal the illegal activity by pretending that the money came from legitimate activity, maybe by keeping two sets of books, and reporting more income from the legitimate business than it actually took in, rather than less, which is tax evasion. 3. Structuring a series of transactions so that no single transaction is for more than $10,000 in order to keep under the radar of the authorities because transactions for more than $10,000 need to be reported. I am not aware of any statute which prohibits you from sending $5000 out of the country, even if you get a bad guy to transmit it for you, unless the bad guy breaks a law and you knew or should have known that he would do that. If you send $5000 and $5000 to your son that is not money laundering, unless there is a criminal intent to facilitate other criminal activity - but you may be in trouble because it doesn't look right. Strike that - it may violate provisions which require you to report sending $10,000 or more outside the country - so it might be a crime if you were trying to evade that statute. At any rate, sending money to terrorists in order to help them commit terrorist acts is "aiding and abetting", which is a felony but may not be money laundering. But if you break down a series of transactions which total over $10,000 so that each transaction is less than $10,000 in order to fly under the radar of the authorities, that's "structuring", which is a separate felony because it is a violation of the money laundering laws. Give me a better hypothetical and I can give you a better answer, otherwise to cover every eventuality you need a law review article, and Hawk linked a pretty good one.