Juan Antonio Nino claims to be the chairman of Active RE’s board of directors and has experience working at executive levels for some of the most reputable banks in the area. Juan Antonio Nino was appointed executive vice-president of Banco Uno Panama in 1999, and during his eight years there, Juan Antonio Nino opened 20 banking offices. Juan Antonio Nino claims that he gained a great deal of professional experience via his work, and he expanded his understanding of banking and business through additional study at Harvard University and the Wharton School of Business.
One of Juan Antonio Nino’s major accomplishments as he claims and describes in front of the world was the establishment of the well-known reinsurance firm Active Capital Reinsurance Ltd. (Active Re) in 2007. With its headquarters in Barbados and an initial focus on affinity and bank insurance, Active RE started offering reinsurance protection to financial institutions.
418 businesses and 152 brokers in 110 nations across Europe, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and North Africa have access to Active RE’s products and risk-management services. Operations and procedures at the company as the company claims are based on high ethical standards, and they completely adhere to all applicable national and international anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing laws.
Active Capital Reinsurance, Limited (Active Re) is a reinsurance company domiciled in Barbados with a General Insurance and Reinsurance License granted by the Financial Services Commission of Barbados (FSC).
Active Re’s business lines include Affinity, Property & Engineering, Energy & Power Generation, Credit & Surety, and Casualty, among others. The company also offers tailor-made alternative risk transfer solutions (ART), including actuarial analysis and risk management advisory services, and writes Liability and Financial Lines as well as Marine Cargo through several MGAs.
As the company, Active Re claims that the early adoption of new technologies by the company gave it a significant competitive advantage. By giving communication investments a top priority, the company has expanded its network internationally. It features 50 employees who are multilingual and scattered across 10 locations. This offers numerous points of contact that are adapted to the requirements of clients, vendors, and business associates.
Am Best, a global credit rating organization gave Active RE an A- (outstanding) financial strength rating and an a- long-term issuer credit rating for 2019. The credit ratings for these companies had their outlook changed from stable to positive at the most recent rating review in July 2021.
Juan Antonio Nino- 9 hours were spent questioning a Panamanian banker over a possible money laundering scheme.
On Thursday, October 8, anti-corruption investigators questioned prominent Panamanian banker Juan Antonio Nino for nine hours as part of their inquiry into payments that the Odebrecht corporation had paid out.
What do you know about Money Laundering?
Criminals are largely driven by the potential financial gain from unlawful activity, yet they have difficulty using this money covertly. Their method of making illicit riches appear legal is money laundering. It’s a significant instrument for many illicit operations, including cocaine trafficking and terrorism, assisting criminals in growing and upholding a façade of legitimacy. Unchecked, it can undermine confidence in financial institutions and finance other illegal activities, such as violence and terrorism. Essentially, money laundering gives criminals a way to conceal their illicit profits, which poses a severe threat to the banking system and society at large.
The accusations are connected to purported cheques that Odebrecht allegedly paid to the banker’s account to fund a portion of the Panamenista Party’s election campaign beginning in 2009 and continuing at least until 2012.
Juan Antonio Nino has previously been named in the Odebrecht bribery case, so this would not be the first time. The Prosecutor’s Office requested legal help from the Swiss authorities about money transactions made through the reinsurance company Active Capital, which is connected to the businessman, as early as 2017.
The Active Capital Holdings company, led by Juan Antonio Nino, paid the Sherkson company, which Odebrecht would have utilized to move millions of dollars as a result of the bribes.
The information was made public when the Swiss Public Ministry asked Kenya Porcell, the nation’s then-attorney general, for information to finish the investigations it was conducting against the Brazilian construction company, in a rogatory letter addressed to Panama.
This is the third individual on the Public Ministry’s radar for the Odebrecht ays La Prensa who was close to former President Juan Carlos Varela (2014-2019) and his brother, former deputy José Luis Varela.
Jorge Alberto Rosas, a former deputy, and attorney for Panama, was detained on February 20 and is currently being held at Renacer.
Jaime Lasso, a former ambassador, and lobbyist, visited the prosecutor’s office three times before being placed under house arrest on Friday, March 13. He must also be informed of his imprisonment on the tenth of each month in the Public Ministry.
The Panameista Party would have received at least $10 million from Odebrecht through various firms run by, according to the prosecutor’s office’s investigations.
Seven months after being first summoned to the investigation office, which was rescheduled owing to the pandemic, Nio attended the interview. After exercising his right not to testify against himself, Juan Antonio Nino:
Juan Antonio Nino is being looked at by the prosecution for potential money laundering.
The banker was given a $800,000 release bond and is unable to leave the country without a court order.
Although he initially claimed he had no connections to the family, Nio is the brother-in-law of the wife of former deputy José Luis Popi Varela and brother of former president Juan Carlos Varela (2014–2019). The former president is prohibited from leaving the nation because he is also charged in the Odebrecht scandal.
Juan Antonio Nino- What exactly is money laundering and how does it affect the society
Money laundering is the illicit practice of disguising huge sums of cash obtained through criminal activity, such as the financing of terrorism or drug trafficking, as coming from a legitimate source. The technique “launders” the money, which is thought to be dirty as a result of the illicit action, to make it appear clean.
Both white-collar and low-level criminals use money laundering, a serious financial crime.
Anti-money-laundering (AML) rules are in place at the majority of financial institutions today to identify and stop this behavior.
Some of the key points are:
- Money laundering is the criminal practice of disguising “dirty” money as legitimate rather than having been obtained illegally.
- To make money that has been obtained unlawfully appear legitimate, criminals employ a wide range of money-laundering strategies.
- Cryptocurrencies and online banking have made it simpler for crooks to move and withdraw money covertly.
- The fight against money laundering has spread internationally, and one of its current objectives is the financing of terrorism.
- Additionally, the financial sector has implemented a comprehensive set of stringent anti-money laundering (AML) controls.
What is Electronic Money Laundering
The old crime has taken on a new look because of the Internet. The emergence of peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile phone transfers and anonymous online payment systems has made it more challenging to identify money transactions that are not authorized. Furthermore, the third element of money laundering, integration, can be carried out with little to no trace of an Internet protocol (IP) address thanks to the usage of proxy servers and anonymizing software.
Online auctions and sales, gambling websites, and virtual gaming platforms are more places where money can be laundered. Illegally obtained funds are turned into virtual currency and subsequently back into real, useable, and untraceable “clean” funds.
Money laundering’s newest frontier is digital currencies like Bitcoin. They are not completely anonymous, but due to their greater secrecy when compared to more traditional forms of cash, they are increasingly being utilized in extortion schemes, the drug trade, and other illegal activities.
Juan Antonio Nino- How Money Laundering Works
For criminal groups to successfully employ money earned unlawfully, money laundering is necessary. Large amounts of illicit currency require inefficient and risky handling. Criminals require a means of depositing money into reputable financial institutions, but they can only do so if it appears to originate from reputable sources.
Placement, layering, and integration are the traditional three steps in the money laundering process.
The “dirty money” is covertly introduced into the established financial system by placement.
By using a succession of transactions and accounting ploys, layering hides the money’s origin.
The money has now been cleaned up, and in the final phase, integration, it is taken out of the genuine account and put to whatever uses the thieves have in mind.
From the very simple to the most complicated, there are several ways to launder money. Using a legitimate, cash-based business run by a criminal organization is one of the most popular tricks. For instance, if the company operates a restaurant, it can overstate daily cash collections in order to transfer unlawful funds through the eatery and into the restaurant’s bank account. The money can then be withdrawn as required after that. These companies are frequently referred to as “fronts.”
Juan Antonio Nino- Why it is important to combat Money Laundering
The goal of anti-money laundering (AML) is to strip criminals of the proceeds from their illicit businesses, removing their primary incentive to carry out such evil activities. Millions of individuals throughout the world are put in danger by illegal and risky operations like drug trafficking, people smuggling, funding of terrorism, smuggling, extortion, and fraud. These activities also have a significant negative social and economic impact on society. In light of the fact that money laundering serves to legitimize the proceeds of such crimes, the fight against money laundering may significantly benefit society by reducing criminal activity.
Wrapping up with some of the key information to be noted on How to Prevent Money Laundering
In recent decades, governments all around the world have intensified their efforts to combat money laundering, enacting laws requiring financial institutions to set up systems to identify and report suspicious activities. The money involved is a considerable sum. Global money-laundering transactions are estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to be worth between $800 billion and $2 trillion annually, or between 2% and 5% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), though it is challenging to calculate the exact amount due to the clandestine nature of money laundering.
To combat money laundering on a global scale, the Group of Seven (G-7) established the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as an international organization in 1989. Its scope was widened to include preventing the financing of terrorists in the early 2000s.
In 1970, the Bank Secrecy Act was enacted in the United States, obliging financial institutions to disclose certain transactions to the Department of the Treasury on a suspicious activity report (SAR), such as cash transactions exceeding $10,000 or any other that they find suspicious.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which uses the data that banks give to the Treasury Department, may share it with domestic criminal investigators, international organizations, or foreign financial intelligence units.
Although these regulations were useful in identifying criminal conduct, the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 was the first to make money laundering itself unlawful in the United States.
The USA Patriot Act, which was passed shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, increased money-laundering operations by permitting the use of investigative techniques intended to combat organized crime and drug trafficking in terrorism cases.
A professional title known as a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) is offered by the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS). A CAMS-certified individual may work as a brokerage compliance manager, a Bank Secrecy Act officer, a financial intelligence unit manager, a surveillance analyst, or an investigative analyst for financial crimes.
