Cash Intensive Businesses
It is estimated that serious organised crime costs the UK alone £24billion per year.
Whether it’s drug trafficking, people trafficking or cybercrime, the illicit proceeds need to be cleaned and this is where you and your business could be affected.
Criminals use a variety of methods to clean dirty money, these fall into two categories –
- Cash based money laundering, essentially the physical movement of money. Large sums are broken down into smaller amounts or they will buy assets which are then sold making it harder to track the original source of funds.
- High end money laundering which focuses on high value ‘transactions’ abusing the financial sector to hide and disguise the illegally gained money.
Are you vulnerable?
Criminals will seek to find businesses that are easily accessed and exploited to facilitate money laundering. This places cash intensive businesses at the top of the list because it will not be out of the ordinary for the business to show a large number of cash transaction – at first sight anyway.
Is your business considered cash intensive? If you fall into one of the following, you could well be the perfect target for money laundering;
- Retail
- Restaurants
- Pubs
Red Flags
Remember that industry patterns of trading can be monitored and if money laundering activity is occurring you will no doubt be seeing periods of increased revenue that are not in line with natural economic growth. HMRC could view this as a red flag and launch further investigations. Therefore it’s important for you to be familiar with your figures, so that you may spot unusual patterns in trading.
Precautions
Engaging with an accountant is one of many steps you can take to keep on top of your figures.
Avanti accountants do so much more than year end, and even if that’s all you need, we’re here to advise and assist as and when. Helping you to have real time information, and the whole picture. A business owner who has a knowledge of the businesses financial picture will be far less attractive to criminals
Call Avanti today to see how we can make you a less attractive proposition to criminals (08000) 388 799