DOHA: A criminal court has sentenced a Filipina to seven years in jail after she was found guilty of laundering a staggering over $3m.
The court, with help from an experts’ committee, ruled that the laundered money was stolen overseas and the theft was an international crime.
Some QR9.6m was left deposited in her bank account here so the court directed that it be confiscated for being returned to the victim.
Local Arabic daily Al Raya reported yesterday that the convict who has gone in appeal, received sums through electronic transfers from a country and re-routed much of it to bank accounts to four countries — Malaysia, China, Singapore and her own country, the Philippines.
Money, in the thousands, was transferred to her bank account here regularly from Hong Kong, transaction details showed, according to the daily.
For example, on February 19, 2013, QR350,000 ($96,114) was credited to her bank account and the following day she transferred QR346,000 (arguably, equivalent of foreign currency) to a beneficiary in Malaysia.
A month later, on March 19, 2013 she received QR300,000 in her bank account and on March 28, she transferred QR297,840 to Malaysia, again to the previous account. The daily said the account holder in Malaysia was a bank employee. Likewise, on May 23, 2013 some QR120,000 were credited to her account and three days hence, on May 26, she remitted QR100,000 overseas through electronic transfer. The beneficiary of this transfer was a company.
The daily said the woman, if she was under duress, could have taken advantage of a Qatari law, Number 4 of 2010 (Article 82) which stipulates that whistle-blowers giving details of suspected cases of money laundering to the authorities concerned need to be forgiven.
She didn’t benefit much from the money transfers either, transaction details show as she would retain only small sums from the credited amounts, cited by the daily show.
The biggest transfer was recorded in her account on July 7, 2013 when a huge $3m was credited to her bank account.
That day she withdrew QR100,000 from her account in cash and the following day, another QR50,000.
On July 8, 2013 she sent overseas through bank transfer $150,000 and the next day withdrew $50,000 in cash.
Her bank became suspicious about such huge transactions taking place in such a short span of time, for she was an ordinary employee and her income was not so much that she could remit such huge funds overseas.
Investigations revealed that she was involved in an international crime whereby money was being stolen from a company in Hong Kong and transferred to the four above-cited countries to hoodwink crime-detecting authorities, the daily said.
She didn’t know the people or entities she was receiving money from or the ones she sent the money to. The Peninsula
