The Egmont Group, an international anti-money laundering network that played a key role in alerting Taiwan authorities to a high-profile case of possible money laundering embroiling Taiwan's former first family, commented for the first time on the matter Saturday, saying that its aim is to combat money laundering but that it is not involved in the probe.
In response to a CNA inquiry by e-mail, the group, headquartered in Canada, finally broke its silence 10 days after a scandal that embroiled former President Chen Shui-bian's family members broke.
"One of the main goals of the Egmont Group is to create a global network by promoting international cooperation between 'financial intelligence units' (FIUs) , " the Egmont Secretariat said in the e-mail, adding that for any information relating to a specific operational matter the FIU in the relevant country should be contacted.
"The Egmont Group does not get involved in such operational matters," the Secretariat said.
According to the Egmont Group, FIUs, which provide an important avenue for information exchange, are entities created by countries around the world to deal with the problem of money laundering.
It said operational case matters within a country or between countries may involve one FIU, or a number of FIUs getting together to follow the money trail, and is up to each FIU to determine whether it is appropriate for it to seek the involvement of other FIUs, or for it to be involved in this process.
Chen admitted last Thursday that he had lied about the campaign expenses for his two mayoral elections and two presidential elections between 1993 and 2004. He said that his wife had wired surplus campaign contributions to overseas bank accounts held by members of his family.
His confession came only after the Foreign Ministry confirmed earlier that same day that Swiss authorities had been seeking Taiwan's help in a probe into a possible money laundering case in Switzerland involving Chen's son Chen Chih-chung and daughter-in-law Huang Jui-ching.
The former president, who has been prohibited by prosecutors from leaving the country, claimed that his wife Wu Shu-jen made the wire transfers without his knowledge.
(Source: http://www.taipeitimes.com/)
The matter came to light when a local magazine, based on a report by the Egmont Group, claimed that Huang had laundered money for the former first family by secretly wiring NT$300 million (US$10 million) overseas in 2006 after the exposure of a "state affairs fund" embezzlement case that implicated Chen and his wife.
The Egmont Group was established in 1995 to stimulate international cooperation between financial intelligence units, meeting regularly to find ways to cooperate, especially in the areas of information exchange, training and the sharing of expertise.
There are currently 108 countries that are members of the Egmont Group. Taiwan's Money Laundering Prevention Center under the Investigation Bureau joined the network in 1998.
Noting that governments around the world recognize the "corrosive dangers" that unchecked financial crimes pose to their economic and political systems, the Egmont Secretariat explained that FIUs, at a minimum, receive and analyze information from financial institutions and other reporting entities and after analyzing the data received, the FIUs may then disclose information relating to suspicious or unusual financial transactions to the competent authorities.
The Chen scandal was exposed under such cooperation.
Taiwan is now actively seeking judicial assistance from Switzerland, Singapore and the United States in the investigation of the scandal.
Ecological Homeostasis
Are We Short of Water and Food ??
- Meteorite Asteroid Impact On Earth Doomsday 2012
- Nasa Climate Report
- Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chief of UN IPCC on a Win-Win Situation for the Planet: Go Vegetarian!
- 20 Questions About Vegetarianism
...Excess protein consumption can cause a variety of problems including bone mineral loss, kidney damage, and dehydration. Your body can only use so much protein, the excess is either broken down through oxidization, placing an enormous strain on the kidneys, or it is stored as body fat. Neither option is particularly desirable...
http://www.lovinghut.com/
Since the vegetarian diet is the most effective solution to global warming, under Supreme Master Ching Hai's guidance, members of The Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association recently opened a chain of Loving Hut vegetarian restaurants around the world, in the United States, Japan, Indonesia, Au Lac and Formosa. These places provide affordable and high-quality vegetarian delicacies to the public, bringing a positive impact on the food and beverage industry...
Meat or vegetables? Independent online (SA)
A recent study has revealed that giving up meat could drastically reduce one's carbon footprint. A diet with meat is responsible for producing in a year (as many) greenhouse gases as driving a mid-sized car for 4,758 km, the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IOeW) said last week. But the food a vegetarian consumes in (the same period of time) is responsible for generating (gases only) as driving for 2,427km, the IOeW said in a study commissioned by independent consumer protection group Foodwatch...
Vegetarian Shoes And Bags
The term pleather ("plastic leather") is a slang term for synthetic leather made out of plastic, a portmanteau of plastic and leather, the term can be either descriptive, or derogatory, depending upon the user (the derogatory use implies use as a substitute for genuine animal hide leather to cut costs)...
From All Corners of the Galaxy
Which Stars Are You From?
- Galactic Highway - The Wormhole
- Stream of Time
Wormholes are a valid consequence of Einstein's general relativity view on the universe. A wormhole, in theory, acts as a shortcut or tunnel through space and time. There are several versions on the same theme (i.e. wormholes may link different universes; they may link the two separate locations in the same universe; they may even link black and white holes together), but the physics is similar, wormholes create a link two locations in space-time, bypassing normal three dimensional travel through space. Also, it is theorized, that matter can travel through some wormholes fuelling sci-fi stories like in the film Stargate or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
If wormholes do exist however, it is highly unlikely that you'll find a handy key to open the mouth of a wormhole in your back yard, they are likely to be very elusive and you'll probably need some specialist equipment to travel through them (although this will be virtually impossible).
Alexander Shatskiy, from the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, has an idea how these wormholes may be observed. For a start, they can be distinguished from black holes, as wormhole mouths do not have an event horizon.
Secondly, if matter could possibly travel through wormholes, light certainly can, but the light emitted will have a characteristic angular intensity distribution. If we were viewing a wormhole's mouth, we would be witness to a circle, resembling a bubble, with intense light radiating from the inside "rim". Looking toward the center, we would notice the light sharply dim. At the center we would notice no light, but we would see right through the mouth of the wormhole and see stars (from our side of the universe) shining straight through.
Source:http://www.universetoday.com/
Plato argued that time is constant - it's life that's the illusion. Galileo shrugged over the philosophy of time and figured out how to plot it on a graph so he could get on with the important physics.
Albert Einstein said that time is just another dimension, a fourth one to go along with the up-down, side-side, forward-back we move through every day. Our understanding of time, Einstein said, is based on its relationship to our environment.
Weirdly, the faster you travel, the slower time moves. (Is it truely weird? Not quite!!) The most radical interpretation of his theory: Past, present, and future are merely figments of our imagination, constructs built by our brains so that everything doesn't seem to happen at once.
Source: http://www.socialtext.net/
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