EXPLORACIÓN INDIRECTA POR SONDEO ELÉCTRICO VERTICAL

under a veil of secrecy. If the money

is linked to terrorism the banks

are legally required to report it, but

if it is merely money looted from

the poorest countries in the world

the banks can remain silent.

Paul Collier, Professor of Economics at Oxford University and author of The Bottom Billion: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it170

Since November 2001, Hong Kong anti-money laundering guidelines had required banks to perform ‘ongoing monitoring of accounts and transactions.’ In June 2004, before these transfers into the Long Beach account were made, these guidelines were updated to require banks to ‘perform on-going scrutiny of the transactions and account throughout the course of the business relationship to ensure that transactions being conducted are consistent

The offices of ICS, the Hong Kong company services provider to whose address Denis Christel’s credit card statements were addressed after his designer shopping sprees.

with the... [bank’s] knowledge of the customer,

its business and risk profile, including, where

necessary, identifying the source of funds.’164 Global Witness asked Bank of East Asia if it had performed any due diligence on AOGC or the named individual as the source of these payments into the Long Beach account; whether it was made aware of the UK High Court judgment on 28 November 2005, which found that AOGC was used in a series of ‘sham’ transactions, and whether it accepted transfer of further payments from AOGC to Long Beach’s account after this date. The bank declined to answer. So to recap for a moment: Bank of East Asia opened an account for a shell company owned by the son of the president of a country where corruption was known to be a serious problem. According to Hong Kong anti-money laundering guidelines, the bank should have checked

to find out who its customer was, whether

directly or indirectly via Orient Investments, but the bank would not tell Global Witness whether it did this or not. The guidelines also require the bank to perform ongoing scrutiny of transactions through the account, but again, it would not tell Global Witness whether this happened. What is clear from the available documentation, though, is that the bank was in a position to know that the

funds in the account were likely to come from Congolese oil sales, because the bank’s own records showed that oil was the main business of Long Beach and transfers into the account

appear to have come from sales of specific

oil cargoes carried in named oil tankers. This raises the third question: Did Bank of East Asia know that an account for a company that traded Congolese oil was being used to pay the personal credit card bills of the son of the president of Congo? Four letters on Long Beach letterhead, between May 2004 and September 2006, request that Bank of East Asia arrange for payment, from the Long Beach Limited account, of Mr Sassou Nguesso’s monthly credit card bill. The letters are signed by Orient Investments on behalf of Long Beach.165 The credit card bills themselves, seen by Global Witness, card numbers 5430 9600 6810 1330 and 5411 2340 4010 1039, are in Mr Sassou Nguesso’s name and are addressed to the Hong Kong address of ICS Trust (Asia) Ltd, one of the ICS group companies.166 _{It is} reasonable therefore to infer that the credit card bills were sent to ICS Trust (Asia), which saw the bills, then instructed its sister company Orient Investments to arrange for

‘Record of terrorists checked’: Bank of East Asia checked whether Denis Christel was a terrorist, but did it manage to identify him as the son of the president of Republic of Congo?

payment from the Long Beach account of which it was signatory. Global Witness wrote to ICS and to Orient Investments to verify this but they did not reply. ICS Trust (Asia) Ltd appears to have had a clear opportunity to identify its customer and observe that the credit card bills were for personal spending. The instructions for payment, sent on Long Beach letterhead by Orient Investments to Bank of East Asia, mention Mr Sassou Nguesso by name as the owner of the credit card. This was the point at which the bank itself had a very clear opportunity to see that it was dealing with the son of the president of Congo: a quick Google search could have established as much. The payment instructions have been stamped, most likely by Bank of East Asia, ‘Record

of terrorists checked’, suggesting that Mr Sassou Nguesso’s name had been run through at least one due diligence database. This would have been another opportunity to verify his identity as a PEP. However, having established that he was indeed not a terrorist, the bank proceeded to arrange for payment of his credit card bills, out of a bank account which it should have known was receiving the proceeds of Congo’s oil. As described above, by 2004 Hong Kong’s banks were required to scrutinise transactions through accounts. Interpretative notes to the June 2004 anti-money laundering guidelines suggested that banks refer to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index when trying to identify risky PEP business.167

In December 2005 Global Witness published information alleging that the head of the Congolese state oil company, Denis Gokana, had sold government oil to his own companies at prices below the market rate in order to

profit from subsequent sales to independent

traders, and that these deals had been overseen by Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso.168

This information was reported in the media, including by Dow Jones on 13 December 2005.169 _{Information was therefore in the public}

domain raising questions over Mr Sassou Nguesso’s role in the dubious sales of Congolese oil. Yet Bank of East Asia was arranging for payment of his credit card bills out of the account of a company that it knew to trade Congolese oil until at least September 2006. Global Witness asked Bank of East Asia if it had done due diligence into the identity of the credit card owner named on the payment instructions that it received from Long Beach, if it established whether he was a politically exposed person, and what due diligence it had done in order to be able to stamp the

Sir David Li Kwok-po,

former Hong Kong politician, and CEO and Chairman of Bank of East Asia (BEA). Until February 2008 Sir David was a member of Hong Kong’s Executive Council. He resigned after paying $8m to the US Securities and Exchange Commission to settle an insider trading case against him. Sir David still represents the financial sector in the Legislative Council. BEA is the largest independent local bank in Hong Kong, and made $542m profit in 2007.172

Credit: Uden Graham/ Redlink/Corbis