The Justice Department had an announcement today on Moneygram International that company that Ant Financial was trying to buy last year. It seems that Moneygram had a consent decree to avoid prosecution for money laundering over a 5-year period beginning in 2012. Had they complied, they would be off the hook by now. Justice extended the agreement for another 30 months.
It is hard to believe that a criminal complaint like this would not have been known to Ant Financial which would have been doing due diligence on Moneygram before they bought them. It involved schemes to get older people to believe they were getting money under different pretexts and defrauding them. That doesn't sound like money laundering to me, but I'm not sure how it was charged or if those are separate crimes.
At any rate, we have to believe that Ant Financial is either really bad at doing due diligence, or that they knew Moneygram was into these schemes and didn't mind. Certainly not good on either count.
No comments:
Post a Comment