Uruguay fighting against Narco Statism

 

Uruguay launches national strategy to combat

money laundering

By Francisca Orellana

   

Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi wants a national effort to combat money laundering, terrorism financing and the proliferation of weapons, aiming to curb the rise of drug trafficking and organized crime in the country. Photo by Elvis Gonzalez/EPA

Aug. 12 (UPI) -- Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi's government has launched a national strategy to combat money laundering, terrorism financing and the proliferation of weapons, aiming to curb the rise of drug trafficking and organized crime in the country.

The initiative is an action plan for 2025 to 2030, based on the 2024 National Risk Assessment, which found that drug trafficking, corruption and the trade of soccer players' transfer rights are among the activities posing the highest risk for money laundering in the country.

"Uruguay today is not achieving -- and has not for a long time -- concrete results in the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism," Presidential Deputy Secretary Jorge Díaz said last week during presentation of the strategy.

In 2019, Uruguay secured 52 convictions for money laundering, but only eight have been recorded this year.

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Díaz said the government seeks to achieve concrete results in combating money laundering.

"We have to effectively show that we are efficient and effective in prevention and enforcement," he said.

In early August, Uruguayan authorities made a record seizure of more than 2.2 tons of cocaine in simultaneous operations in Montevideo and Canelones.

The Interior Ministry said the seizure was one of the biggest blows to drug trafficking in the country's recent history and underscored the need to strengthen financial investigations to dismantle the criminal networks behind such shipments.

According to a report from Uruguay's Central Bank, the Financial Information and Analysis Unit received 964 suspicious transaction reports in 2024, up 6% from 911 in 2023. Of those, 12 cases were referred to the courts.

The national strategy is part of a broader effort to combat money laundering that also includes the Integrated System for Combating Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking, or SILCON. Created by decree and led by the Presidency, SILCON coordinates intelligence among several ministries.

As such, the strategy and SILCON work together: while one focuses on strengthening institutional, legal and financial prevention capabilities, the other reinforces operational and intelligence coordination against organized crime and drug trafficking.

US Terror Attacks & Convictions Just in December 2017

The New Normal - America

BY CLARION PROJECT 

The following is an infographic showing the arrests and convictions for terror charges in the U.S. in December 2017. You can search for their names on our site to find our more details of their cases.

7,000 Terrorist Suspects on Loose in Germany – Former MI6 Chief

It is unlikely that everyone on the 'watch list' is a genuine terrorist threat.

The difficulty is determining which ones really are.

London Metropolitan Police © Peter Nicholls / Reuters

Thousands of terrorism suspects are on the loose in Germany and there is no way to track them down, says the former head of counterterrorism for MI6, Richard Barrett.

His intervention comes as it was revealed the Berlin truck attack suspect Anis Amri was known to security services and police as a criminal with proven extremist leanings.

Barrett said Amri was just one of hundreds of “really extreme potential terrorists on the books” in Germany.

“In addition to that though, if you include all the Lander (local regions) in Germany, they have about 7,000 live cases,” he told the Daily Mail.

“As you can imagine, that is an almost impossible number to control.”

Most UK terrorist arrests end in no charges or convictions

Recent UK Home Office figures, however, threw into question what qualifies as a terrorism suspect in Britain after they showed that most UK terrorism arrests result in no charges or convictions.

The statistics show that the vast majority of suspects arrested in relation to terrorism over the last decade and a half are eventually released without charge.

Of 3,349 suspects from England and Wales arrested under terrorism legislation since the September 11 attacks, only around 18 percent were convicted of planning or facilitating violent acts.

A further 10 percent were arrested for terrorism but convicted of non-terrorism charges. The majority of those arrested in that period were British Muslims.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Lord Paddick, himself a former high-ranking police officer, told the Guardian Friday: “The police need to account for these figures. It is extremely worrying that there is such a high attrition rate between those arrested and those convicted of terrorism offenses.”

US potential terrorist registry dismantled

Is it possible they throw the net too wide, that they include people that are no real threat? In the USA, a registration list was developed after 9/11 that held the names of everyone who came from countries known to produce terrorists. The list ceased to be updated 5 years ago and has never resulted in a conviction for any kind of terrorist act. President Obama is now in the process of destroying the list before President-elect Trump can get his hands on it.