Moroccan Bank Blocks $80 Million Money Laundering Scheme Linked to Latin America

It all started with a request to open an account in a bank branch in the name of a recently created company to receive financial transfers amounting to 80 million dollars, or about 800 million dirhams from a Latin American country classified as "high risk". These funds were supposed to "finance a gourmet restaurant project offering Chinese cuisine dishes" and the opening of other branches in several Moroccan tourist cities, reports Assabah.

However, the insistence of a Chinese national and his Moroccan partners on the urgency of opening the account and the nature of the country of origin of the funds raised suspicions of the bank manager from whom they requested the account opening. As required by Law No. 43.05 on the fight against money laundering, the bank manager forwarded the file to an internal service responsible for managing due diligence requirements, namely verifying the identity of the applicant before opening an account and obtaining all documents related to their activity and commercial environment.

The suspicions were confirmed. "Internal investigations revealed several grey areas concerning the company’s activity abroad: its capital did not allow it to open branches internationally, and, still being in the creation phase, it had only existed for less than five years," it is specified.