The Manhattan prosecutor has charged a professor with money laundering. Bruce Bagley is said to have washed 2.5 million US dollars. It should be about income from bribery and corruption in public construction projects in Venezuela, as quoted by the "New York Times" from the indictment. Bagley kept ten percent of the income as a kind of commission.
Bagley teaches at the University of Miami and researches on money laundering, corruption and organized crime in South America. According to the "NYT," he advised the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the United Nations, the Department of Justice, and several governments of countries in South America. In 2015, he published a book on the subject, another in May this year.
According to the investigators, however, he gave up any academic distance to his topic by 2016 at the latest: At that time he had opened an account on which there was initially little activity. One year later, he received large sums of accounts from the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland.
"Stolen from the Venezuelans"
The accounts therefore only seemingly belonged to a food company and an investment advisory firm. In fact, according to investigators, according to "NYT," they were controlled by a Colombian. The money in the accounts came from bribery and embezzlement in Venezuela. "It was stolen from the Venezuelans," Manhattan Attorney General Geoffrey Berman said.
Bagley had known about the source of the money and made sham contracts to wash it. After each transfer to the account, he had issued a check from his bank for 90 percent of the sum and gave it to a stranger. The rest had been transferred to an account of the professor. In this way he received at least 14 transfers.
If convicted, Bagley faces 20 years in prison, according to the NYT. His defender said it was too early to comment on the allegations. He had to deal even more closely with the indictment.
