Costa Rican arrested in Spain for alleged financial crimes
Posted: Friday, May 24, 2013 - By L. Arias
Costa Rican authorities raided suspect´s home and offices in San José and Heredia.
Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, 39, on Friday was arrested in Spain as part of a money laundering investigation performed jointly by police agencies in the United States and Costa Rica.
Costa Rican prosecutor José Pablo González said Budovsky, a Costa Rican citizen of Ukrainian origin, has been under investigation since 2011 for money laundering using a company he created in the country called Liberty Reserve.
Local investigations began after a request from a prosecutor’s office in New York. On Friday, San José prosecutors conducted raids in Budovsky's house and offices in Escazá, Santa Ana, southwest of San José, and in the province of Heredia, north of the capital.
Budovsky's businesses in Costa Rica apparently were financed by using money from child pornography websites and drug trafficking.
New York conviction
According to records from the U.S. Justice Department, on July 27, 2006, Budovsky and a partner identified as Vladimir Kats were indicted by the state of New York on charges of operating an illegal financial business, GoldAge Inc., from their Brooklyn apartments.
They had transmitted at least $30 million to digital currency accounts worldwide since beginning operations in 2002.
The digital currency exchange, GoldAge, received and transmitted $4 million between Jan. 1, 2006, and June 30, 2006, as part of the money laundering scheme.
Customers opened online GoldAge accounts with limited documentation of identity, then GoldAge purchased digital gold currency through those accounts; the defendants' fees sometimes exceeded $100,000.
Customers could choose their method of payment to GoldAge: wire remittances, cash deposits, postal money orders or checks.
Finally, the customers could withdraw the money by requesting wire transfers to accounts anywhere in the world or by having checks sent to any identified individual.
Budovsky and Kats were sentenced to five years in prison for engaging in the business of transmitting money without a license, a felony violation of state banking law, but got probation.
berikut screenshot statement dari salah satu support broker Agea
kesimpulannya, yang deposit via Liberty reserve di broker tersebut tetap bisa melakukan WD melalui Payment Processor lainnya.
Spoiler for Broker Instaforex:
We have to inform you that cooperation with Liberty Reserve has been terminated as the payment system had shut down.
The case falls under Clause 7.7.1 of the Public Offer Agreement, according to which all the funds deposited through the payment system that later disappears are deducted from the trading account of a customer, as the company is not a guarantor of any payment system, and the money received through the payment system is stored on the company's accounts with the system enabling the company to quickly process your withdrawal requests.
Nevertheless, the company's management has considered that a lot of partners and customers used Liberty Reserve for funding their accounts and made a decision that Clause 7.7.1 of the Public Offer Agreement should be exercised in the following way:
1. Withdrawal of the funds deposited through Liberty Reserve is restricted for 6 months starting from May 30, 2013;
2. Since November 30, 2013 the withdrawals will be available, provided an account was used for trading during these 6 months;
3. Since November 30, 2013 at processing the withdrawal request, InstaForex shall deduct from an account 50% of all the funds deposited through Liberty Reserve. The amount of a requested withdrawal should include this deduction.
We strongly recommend that you use reliable payment methods such as bank wire, international bank cards, local transfers, Skrill, LiqPay, Payza.
Liberty Reserve payment system is still not available
Monday, May 27, 2013 - 14:00
Dear traders!
Due to the fact that Liberty Reserve payment system is still not available, financial operations through this payment system are not processed.
All the deposits made via Liberty Reserve are safe and stored on FBS segregated bank accounts. If you deposited your FBS trading account via Liberty Reserve, you may easily withdraw your funds any time using the following options:
• Webmoney (amounts from 1 to 100 USD)
• Moneybookers (amounts from 1 to 100 USD)
• Bank Wire Transfer in USD (over 100 USD)
• Local Bank Transfer in IDR (any amount)
Please note that all customers’ deposits are safe and available to be withdrawn any time. You may also continue your trading using your accounts which were deposited through Liberty Reserve payment system. Present withdrawal conditions will be invariable.
The Liberty Reserve money transfer gateway is currently unavailable due to reasons that are still unclear. Therefore this method will be unavailable for Deposit or Withdrawal operations until further notice.
Clients who used Liberty Reserve in order to deposit into a HotForex account will now have the option to withdraw funds via the GlobePay, Moneybookers or Webmoney money transfer gateways.
IMPORTANT NOTE: For withdrawals to be possible, the name on the HotForex trading account needs to match the name of the money transfer gateway. Therefore, clients who do not have an account with any of the above money transfer gateways will need to open an account with them under their own name.
We inform you that the electronic payment system Liberty Reserve has serious technical problems from 05/24/2013 till the current moment (the official website is not available, the service does not work), that leads to the partial or full blockage of deposit/withdrawal operations from trading accounts of our clients via this payment system.
In view of the fact that we do not exclude the possibility of prolongation of maintenance works in Liberty Reserve, our company strongly recommends to all of our clients, that used Liberty Reserve earlier, to withdraw funds via bank transfers and use any other payment systems, available on our official website for depositing the trading accounts.
