Major money laundering cases link to tax crimes,corruption, drug trafficking
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Phyo / Munich (NP News) - Feb 25
According to the data from the State Administration Council (SAC), the most common types of money laundering cases are tax-related crimes such as tax evasion, tax fraud and failure to return tax, corruption, and drug-related crimes.
Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML CFT) national-level strategy (2024-2028) published by the Central Body on Anti-Money Laundering includes the abovementioned information.
The Central Body on Anti-Money Laundering said that it is accelerating anti-money laundering efforts to prevent money laundering from interfering in the country's administrative, economic, and social sectors.
The central body has informed that the most common types of money laundering are tax and tax-related crimes, environmental crimes, bribery, corruption, and illegal drug trafficking.
“Illegal money refers to money that is not paid to the state in accordance with its prescribed rules and regulations, and cannot be accounted for through official channels. All of that money is black money. First, it can be obtained through bribery. A person in power takes bribes because he wants to get extra money from someone else in addition to his salary. That's why he has illegal money. Therefore, many powerful people can also have big companies,” Dr. Aye Maung, chairman of the Arakan Front Party told the NP News.
Currently, there are speculations that corrupt individuals in the country are laundering money through tax evasion, bribery, and drug trafficking by investing in real estate and projects, as well as by purchasing expensive items.
It is believed that corrupt individuals are exploiting the country's instability to increase drug trafficking.
"Drugs are flowing like untraceable money. The key point is that they are sent from the place of production to where the consumers are. Along the drug route, black money emerges. The way to convert that black money into white money is by finding markets where it can be invested in the long term. Sometimes, they may consider land, followed by housing and projects. In other words, they turn that black money into white money," Dr. Aye Maung continued.
He added that it is necessary to examine the extraordinary prosperity of businessmen and those in power.
In recent times, there have been frequent occurrences of valuable drug seizures within the country, often involving billions of kyats.
In addition, some non-governmental armed groups are also accused of being involved in drug trafficking.
In 2024, the SAC government destroyed various drugs worth over 349 million kyats, or 1,163 billion US dollars.