DCEC chief anti-corruption technical officer, Lesley Senwelo said such transactions usually involve bogus addresses in foreign lands and the time taken to get legal assistance in the concerned countries is another hindrance. "Sometimes we would go to the concerned country and find that the said person (a criminal) doesn't exist, yet his passport shows he does exist," he explained at an anti-corruption workshop organised by DCEC for religious leaders. He added that they are hampered by lack of capacity to cope with methods used by sophisticated criminal syndicates and professional money launderers.
He said they handle many cases of money laundering some of which are transnational. He stated that about two years ago, they nabbed local thieves who had defrauded a local company of P3 million. He said that they made a breakthrough in their investigations when one of the criminals gave his girlfriend P100, 000. "Then the girlfriend went to make a P100,000 down payment for a car. She then went to her employer and asked for a P50,000 loan to clear the outstanding balance. So it was clean and dirty money. We impounded the car," he said.
