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GIVEN the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by banks on fighting money laundering, fears that trade-based money laundering (TBML) remains widespread, as stressed by FATF, the APG (http://www.fatf-gafi.org/publications/methodsandtrends/documents/trade-basedmoneylaunderingtypologies.html), and most recently, the European Commission (https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/supranational_risk_assessment_of_the_money_laundering_and_terrorist_financing_risks_affecting_the_union_-_annex.pdf), are of serous concern. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) said that in 2018, global merchandise exports were worth USD19.48 trillion, so there is plenty of place for laundered money to hide.…

The large-scale civil protests that erupted across Lebanon in October 2019, and which continue today, have promoted large scale money laundering thought concerted and often successful attempts to avoid capital controls imposed by Lebanese banks to head off failure. Billions of dollars have flown out of the country, the Banque du Liban, the central bank, has warned, while Lebanese consumers have frantically withdrawn deposits as the Lebanese Pound LBP)  has devalued against the US dollar – in October it was officially pegged to the US dollar at LBP1,507 and began to trade above that rate after the protests began, reaching LBP2,700 to the USD in March 2020.…

ANTI-money laundering maybe a career that financial and legal professionals increasingly follow, but the training and qualification structure for AML/CFT is still emerging and solidifying, and there are doubts whether it will ever coalesce into a formal global structure, akin to FATF recommendations.…

SLOWLY, but steadily, the world’s energy policies are turning green, towards promoting a sustainable future, targeting an increasingly universal goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. With evidence mounting not only that climate change is accelerating, but potentially wreaking serious damage on the world’s economies and peoples, the Paris Agreement goal of holding the rise in global temperatures to well below 2C trying to limit it to 1.5C is being reflected in the plans of governments, regional and international organisations.…

Nicotine consumption is declining worldwide, with smokers are consuming less, as well as e-cigarette and heated tobacco users, according to market research provider Euromonitor International’s ‘Nicotine Survey, Exploring the Modern Nicotine Landscape’.

“Overall [the study] shows nicotine prevalence is declining not growing, and it is clear to see there isn’t much evidence that greater availability of nicotine formats is increasing smoking prevalence among adults,” said Shane MacGuill, head of tobacco research at Euromonitor International, in a webinar attended by TJI.…

South Africa’s electronic vaping product (EVP) market is growing fast – at 5% a year, according to management consultant Canback Consulting, and already estimated to be worth South African Rand ZAR1.16 billion (EUR82.8 million/USD68.2 billion). To target such growth, Philip Morris South Africa (PMSA) opened its first standalone IQOS store last August (2019), selling its smoke-free devices and associated product in the upmarket Johannesburg neighbourhood of Sandton, adding to the 11 kiosks in malls it was already operating in the provinces of Gauteng, Western Cape and Kwazulu-Natal.…

Ecommerce is becoming an increasingly popular way to order tobacco-related products, especially e-cigarettes and vapes, but are such single-item shipments contributing to more carbon emissions and packaging waste than buying in-store or kiosk? E-commerce accounts for an increasingly large slice of the global retail market, growing 28% in 2017, 22.9% in 2018 and by 20.7% in 2019, to USD3.535 trillion, and forecast to reach USD4.2 trillion in 2020, according to eMarketer’s Global Ecommerce Forecast 2019.…

ZAMBIA’S government is caught between enforcing World Health Organisation (WHO)-sponsored tobacco control regulations and pushing an economic strategy which touts tobacco leaf as a key component of its goal to transform the Zambian economy to upper middle-income status by 2030. Zambia signed and ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2008 and has since been working to implement its provisions, although progress has been slow.…

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted efforts by South Sudan tertiary education leaders and ministers within the newly formed South Sudan unity government to restore the country’s universities, many of which were devastated by the years of civil war that may now have ended.…

Only five European Union (EU) member states out of the current 27 have fully and properly complied with a requirement to set up public ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) registers by January 10 (2020) under the fifth anti-money laundering directive (5AMLD), according to research by campaign group Global Witness.…