Money

On the trail of Narcos' dirty money… the Glasgow firm helping snare drugs barons in Latin America


Plomo o plata? Viewers of Netflix drama Narcos will be familiar with the unenviable choice of lead or silver offered to police tasked with seizing contraband from drugs baron Pablo Escobar.

In the 80s and 90s, there was little the authorities could do to prevent criminals bribing officials or laundering their dirty money through apparently legitimate businesses.

Now, in a world of digital money transfers, it’s difficult for crooks to fully enjoy the spoils without it passing through the international financial system. And that is where Glasgow company Altia-ABM’s super-powerful software comes into play.

“If you have a suitcase full of money, it is virtually useless,” says Altia-ABM’s chief executive Ian Watson. “At some stage money from any source has to hit the financial system to legitimise it, so you can then use it. The moment there is a financial transaction, you start to leave an electronic trail.”

Colombia is a relatively new market for Altia, who were introduced to the country via the UK’s National Crime Agency. The firm’s software was let loose on screeds of bank statements and proved so successful that the authorities signed up for extra licences, and this year it was bought up in neighbouring Peru.

Watson says: “Colombia has really turned itself around. Medellin, which was once the drug capital of the world, is now aiming to be the financial capital of South America. Most of it is legit money but the government realised they had to build suitable investigatory forces, so they formed a group called the Fiscalia General de la Nation, who are financial investigators.

“The UK’s National Crime Agency were running schemes to help the Colombians and the Peruvians, and also Chile, to build up their knowledge and expertise in anti-corruption. They helped us get into Colombia and because of our work there, we were introduced to Peru.”

Watson is one of the founders of  Altia-ABM, established in 2002. The company has grown to generate £6 million turnover, merging with Nottingham firm ABM Intelligence in 2016. It has 59 employees including four ex-senior cops and offices in Australia and Canada. And the software has become ever more powerful.

Bank statements and other financial documents are scanned and the software searches for patterns, highlighting sums that appear from nowhere, or disappear from one account and turn up in another. After that, it’s down to human investigators to decide whether they are suspicious.

Watson describes how computers can now sift through gigabytes of data in seconds, discerning between credit card bills, mortgage payments and what might be the proceeds from an international people trafficking operation.

In one case, a gang from Eastern Europe operating in the UK was smashed and Altia-ABM software was one of the tools used by the experienced investigators , resulting in victims of modern slavery being freed, millions of pounds being seized and the culprits locked up.

“They were trafficking men and women and kids,” says Watson. “The men were sold on to farms. The women were trafficked into sex, or nail bars, and the kids are trafficked into sex or menial work. That ring was  broken using some of our software, by finding that money moving between accounts.”

Altia-ABM’s chief executive Ian Watson co-founded the company in 2002

Altia-ABM’s software was also used in the UK case against Zamira Hajiyeva, the wife of a jailed Azeri banker whose unexplained wealth allowed her to spend £16 million in Harrods. The investigation traced money laundering from Azerbaijan through the British Virgin Islands and into the UK and she was the first person convicted using new ‘McMafia’ legislation.

Altia-ABM is now aiming to win business across Latin America. With introductions from the UK Department for International Trade, it is working with the authorities in Panama, which has in the past been viewed by many as a haven for dirty money. Jamaica has bought some of the software with support from the UK, which aims to stem the flow of drugs from the Caribbean. Prosecutors in Peru say they made more successful prosecutions against organised crime thanks to the reliability of evidence using Altia-ABM software.

Altia-ABM’s regional manager for the Americas Marguerite Clark is taking intensive lessons in Spanish as she lines up meetings in various countries across the continent.

She said: “Many of the cases in Colombia and Peru will involve drugs, they have a lot of serious and organised crime related to drugs, which subsequently involves the analysis of huge volumes of bank statements.

“Before our software, financial investigators would spend weeks and weeks manually entering data into Excel before any analysis could take place. In some cases where the volume of bank statements was so high, they would simply go through the transactions line by line with a pencil and a ruler, looking for suspicious transactions.

“In the UK every police force uses software like this as standard but in Colombia and Peru and the rest of South America it’s brand new. In some cases, even considering the analysis of bank statements when working on an investigation is a fairly new concept.”

Chief operating officer Rob Sinclair and Americas regional manager Marguerite Clark with her team members Vasil Simeonov and Mariangela Castillo

Colombia is now the fastest growing economy in Latin America and, while Altia-ABM’s revenue in the continent is presently small scale, Watson believes it could grow to millions. Australia, which is fertile ground for people-trafficking out of south-east Asia, is worth more than £1 million a year. In Africa it sells “one or two products” but in a continent where many countries are trammelled with corruption, the potential is huge. Altia tried to drum up business in South Africa under the previous president Jacob Zuma but perhaps unsurprisingly found it unreceptive.

“The head of security for one organisation asked why do we want a secure audit trail? We didn’t sell,” says Watson.

They could make more headway under the new broom of Cyril Ramaphosa. Watson adds: “We’ve had sales teams out there recently and it’s changed quite a lot, the new regime’s in and there is much more of an anti-corruption drive out there.”

The moment Watson really knew Altia-ABM had made it was when the company name became a verb. The prosecution lawyer in a trial stood up in court and said they had “Altia-ed” a bank statement.

Watson says: “The biggest test is if it’s used in court as evidence, are the police comfortable enough to take the evidence from our system to court? We became a verb – you know you’ve made it when you become a verb!”



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