Chinese money laundering is global
It supports criminal organizations
And the Chinese Communist Party is behind it
Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
China is a global center for money laundering.
For those of you keeping score, China is also a global center for ethnic genocide,
organ harvesting, political kidnapping, and torture.
At this point I think they love breaking the law so much they’re probably also a global center for
jaywalking… just for the love of the game.
But they’re really innovative when it comes to their money laundering.
Different variations are super confusing and convoluted. And that’s the point.
Chinese money laundering happens everywhere from
Italy to Australia and all the countries in between.
In some ways, this is a problem for the Chinese Communist Party.
Many of China’s wealthy want to flee the country. This fuels a massive amount
of capital flight, which is when the wealthy move their money out of China.
They want to put their cash into property and assets abroad so it’s easier for them
to get out of China when they need to. Because China is a global center for ethnic genocide,
organ harvesting, political kidnapping, and torture.
For years, the Chinese regime has been selectively cracking down on
Chinese citizens who try to get around Chinese laws. Those laws generally prohibit them from
converting more than $50,000 in Chinese yuan into foreign currency in a year.
If you were to look at headlines alone, you may be led to believe
that China just wants to enforce rules and clean up dirty money.
But China under the Chinese Communist Party lives and breathes dirty money. And that’s by design.
The money they breathe is even dirtier than the air they breathe. And that’s saying something.
Beneath the surface of these money laundering clampdowns are power
struggles to kick out *some* corrupt money launderers while keeping others.
Because the Chinese Communist Party is more than willing to turn a blind eye
to money laundering if it helps them. In fact, the CCP is encouraging it.
Case in point, look no further than China’s top banks.
Like the state-owned Bank of China .
French authorities accused Bank of China of not complying with anti-money laundering
laws. That’s because they did nothing when tens of millions of euros were sent
to Bank of China accounts between 2012 and 2014 without paying European taxes.
But Bank of China doesn’t just not report money laundering.
It, along with other Chinese banks, actively cooperates with criminals.
In 2015, Italy sought to prosecute Bank of China’s Milan branch managers for their involvement
in smuggling money from counterfeiting, prostitution, labor exploitation, and tax evasion.
Or what the CCP calls, “a Tuesday.”
These aren’t just some greedy rogue employees doing their own thing either.
Because the Chinese regime actually stymied Italy’s money laundering investigations,
and yet claimed that Chinese authorities knew nothing of the case.
In response to Western media coverage of the story, Chinese state-run media The Global Times
wrote, in Mandarin, that “[The Bank of China has] no obligation to cooperate with Italian police."
A similar thing happened in Spain with the also state-owned Industrial
and Commercial Bank of China, known as ICBC.
Spanish authorities caught four employees at ICBC who were helping launder tens of millions
of euros for clients, including Chinese criminal organizations.
The bank itself wasn’t very cooperative. According to Spanish prosecutors,
rather than help crack down on money laundering, the bank deliberately
obstructed investigations by supplying misleading information about its clients.
Having the Spanish authorities poking further into
the bank’s corruption made the Chinese Communist Party nervous, for good reason.
The probe went so high up in the bank’s European operations that “China's top
official in Madrid pressured Spanish officials to conclude the inquiry,
warning that failure to do so would harm economic relations.”
This is like if your boyfriend told you it would hurt your relationship if you
kept looking into why there’s lipstick on his collar. That’s a big red flag.
The also state-owned Agricultural Bank of China is guilty of corrupt money laundering as well.
Over in New York, the state’s Department of Financial Services found that the bank
violated anti-money laundering laws and masked suspicious financial transactions.
Some of the bank’s shady practices include using coded messages through
SWIFT—the financial communication system used for international banking transactions. Those
coded messages helped entities that are subject to US sanctions get around those sanctions.
And the bank silenced compliance officers who raised the alarm on suspicious activities.
Yep, that definitely sounds like China. For a country that claims to care about
countering crime, it always likes to act sus.
This would be like if Ash Ketchum said he wanted to
stop Pokemon fighting leagues. You’re literally the champion of it, dude.
But China’s not just laundering money to just gain more wealth. It’s using
it as a tool to actively undermine the West. I’ll tell you how after the break.
Welcome back.
The Chinese Communist Party is allowing state-owned Chinese banks
to facilitate money laundering abroad and defending them against criticism.
But there’s also a different kind of money laundering. One
that involves underground Chinese banks.
Some of these money laundering schemes involve criminal organizations,
including Mexican drug cartels.
The CCP is so good at crime they’re helping crime on the other side of the planet.
Honestly, that would be kind of inspiring if it wasn’t, you know… crime.
Thanks to Chinese banking apps—which are outside the purview of the US and other
countries—“Chinese organized crime has taken over money laundering for the Mexican drug cartels,
providing a more efficient system for transferring drug sales profits to Mexico.
This has increased net profits for the cartels and empowered them to expand their operations.”
A lot of it is done through what’s called trade-based money laundering.
The gist of it is that dealers convert drug cash into Chinese merchandise—which are often
overpriced cheap goods—either directly from Chinese vendors or through US importers.
That’s then shipped to wherever the cartels need their funds. Once sold, the proceeds get banked.
Thanks to China’s massive influence as the world’s great exporter,
trade-based money laundering can easily be disguised in large shipments with the help
of Chinese manufacturers and freight-forwarders.
So by trying to save money,
people buying cheap Chinese goods wind up supporting Mexican drug cartels.
According to John Cassara, a former US Treasury investigator, this is interconnected with
China’s underground banking system, which bypasses conventional banking institutions.
China has so much influence over the cartels that underground Chinese banks
are now handling almost all narco money in Latin America.
We don’t know how extensive these underground banks are, but they’re massive.
In Italy, for example, there's an ongoing investigation into a secret bank with branches
in Rome, Florence, and other cities that are capable of laundering up to 2 billion
euros annually and sending the money into accounts held at Chinese state-owned banks.
All evidence indicates that the Chinese Communist Party is actively working with money launderers.
Canada is another prime example of that.
Especially in the Vancouver area,
which has become a byword for money laundering fuelled by Chinese cash.
“Billions of dollars a year have been laundered [in Vancouver] by criminals, using tactics such
as gambling in casinos, buying and selling luxury goods and taking out residential mortgages that
are paid off in cash installments small enough not to trigger any alarm bells.”
Probably because small amounts of cash in Canada are called loonies
and toonies, and it’s impossible to be alarmed by money that sounds like it’s used by Bugs Bunny.
According to investigative journalist Sam Cooper,
the same guy who helped shed light to Chinese influence operations in Canada’s elections,
respected officials in the CCP are handlers and bosses of elite, transnational Asian gangs.
And they’re corrupting Canadian officials in the process.
If there’s crime anywhere on the planet, there’s a decent chance the CCP is backing it.
The CCP is like the Pharrell Williamsof crime.
They helped produce *everything* over the last couple of decades.
There are a lot of examples of the Communist Party’s bromance with dangerous money launderers.
One example of this is Tse Chi Lop , a Canadian citizen
who was known as Asia’s most wanted drug boss.
He was the leader of a transnational drug trafficking syndicate known as “The Company,”
which both the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canadian Security Intelligence Service
know is connected to Chinese state police and intelligence agencies.
Over in Australia, there’s the Chen Organization,
It’s pretty obvious how close it is to the CCP.
Its services were used by Alvin Chau , the Macau gambling Junket
king who now faces 18 years in jail in China.
According to a prominent Chinese dissident, Chau was a “white glove,” or bagman,
and a Macau asset to top Party officials connected to former leader and deceased toad Jiang Zemin.
The Chen Organization is also suspected of transfering money for Simon Pan , a
brothel owner and alleged money launderer who is a
business partner of Ming Chai , the cousin of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Seeing a pattern here? Police and intelligence agencies sure do.
Especially Chinese ones, since they’re in on it.
“Over the past five years, [Australian] state and federal policing agencies have consistently
linked figures with ties to the Chinese government to organized crime in Australia.”
All this should be a warning that China’s not a country we should trust to counter
money laundering. It will look the other way for Communist Party elites and fuel corruption in
other countries. Worse yet, it’ll get money into shady networks involved in everything from drugs,
illegal arms deals, human trafficking, and even terrorism. And possibly even
jaywalking… just for the love of the game.
And this show is possible because of viewer support. So as a thank you to my wonderful
fans who support China Uncensored through the crowdfunding website Patreon or the
exclusive social media platform Locals, I’ll answer one of your questions:
StatedChimp asks on Patreon: “Has the CCP ever claimed, or hinted at, that all Chinese people
regardless of citizenship belong to them? I know that China owns all pandas, but has it ever gone
as far as a whole ethnic group?” Good question.
The CCP is not like most other governments. They first look at Chinese people by race,
not by some kind of legal status.
They see people of the Han ethnic group as superior.
They see other ethnic groups, like Tibetans and Uyghurs,
as inferior. But they still belong to the CCP.
And any ethnically Chinese people who live in other countries also belong to the CCP,
regardless of citizenship. They don’t say this explicitly. But they sure act like it.
One of the key missions of the CCP’s United Front Work Department is to co-opt
these Chinese people. Even if they’re second- or third-generation Chinese.
This mission includes “monitoring the activities of the Chinese
diaspora and silencing dissidents based abroad”.
The CCP needs to maintain control of overseas Chinese, because Chinese
people who live in free countries, and can speak freely, can criticize the CCP.
And enough organized criticism can lead to the downfall of the CCP.
So basically, the CCP treats all ethnically Chinese people like pandas:
That they belong to China, and really ought to be put in cages.
Thanks for your question and your support, StatedChimp.
And thanks to everyone else who supports China Uncensored through Patreon. Join us
at Patreon and contribute a dollar or more per episode. You’ll get a lot of cool perks,
including me answering your questions on the show. Check out Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell. See you next time.