Penningtvätt och Finansiell Brottslighet i Östersjöområdet

Penningtvätt och Finansiella Aspekter av Narkotikahantering
Swedish Krona (SEK) out of the country in 2003 alone. These transactions
are mainly carried out anonymously and with very limited accounting,
creating obvious risks for money laundering and terrorist financing. This
was clearly illustrated when two Swedish citizens were sentenced to jail in
October 2005 for financing large-scale acts of terrorism against civilians in
northern Iraq. These transactions were carried out through an informal
money transmittal organization which one of the men ran in Malmö in
southern Sweden. The investigation into the case was initiated only after the
Swedish security services were tipped of by their American and German
counterparts. In spite of this event, the Swedish Financial Supervisory
Authority (Finansinspektionen) is still not allowed to carry on-site inspections
of these financial actors. Neither are Swedish charitable organizations
audited in any structured fashion. This is remarkable, as it has been
extensively illustrated that such organizations have previously been abused
for terrorist financing.
There are also technological gaps in the Sweden’s defense against money
laundering. For example, the Swedish financial inspection unit
(Finanspolisen) receives a majority of the approximate 10 000 suspicious
transaction reports (STRs) issued every year by fax. Swedish banks – as
opposed to for example Norwegian banks - do not use surveillance software
that identifies so-called “smurfing”, i.e. when a financial transaction is
divided into several smaller fragments which by themselves will be too small
to attract any attention.
Furthermore, knowledge about the extent of financial crimes in Sweden is
limited. Sweden has not carried out any extensive risk analysis of its
financial sector, neither has it subjected its regulatory framework to any
regular internal evaluations in order to monitor progress. A review of
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