YOUR article on the prison sentence given to a Barclays Bank worker for involvement in the laundering of £16 million has to be the tip of an iceberg that is conveniently ignored (“Five admit laundering £16m of cyber crime gang’s money through Barclays”, September 20).
It has been estimated that the UK illicit drug market turns over £6 billion a year yet there is under £20bn of hard cash in circulation. How does that hard cash held by a few individuals get back into circulation?
It was demonstrated when HSBC was fined $2bn for acting as a conduit for billions in Mexican drug money. Coupled with most money only existing in electronic form it is counter-intuitive to believe the banking system wittingly or otherwise does not play a major part in recycling the profits from illegal activity.
It is conveniently overlooked that the estimated $15 trillion of tax-avoidance cash supposedly squirrelled away in tax havens and reinvested back into the economy has to make use of the global banking system as there simply isn’t that amount of hard cash to be ferried about in envelopes.
I recently moved house and the hoops I have had to jump through to conform with “money-laundering” regulations are tiresome. I wonder how someone with hundreds of thousands or millions in dodgy money manages to get it into the system without help. Yet it must happen as it is estimated that the illegal drugs business accounts for nearly two per cent of global GDP.
David J Crawford,
85 Whittinghame Court,
1300 Great Western Road, Glasgow.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel