Politics, War and … TikTok

What do Politics, War and TikTok have in common? Well, that’s easy… money laundering. And maybe more?

Recent events in Romania have brought these 3 issues to my attention and certain connections inevitably came up.

First of all – Money Laundering is present in all of them

Much of the money spent in all three of them is legitimate and is mostly formed of the sources below, usually visible or even public:

• Donations and contributions for Politics
• State contributions for War
• Personal or company payments for their advertising on TikTok

However, as recent public information showed, large amounts of money come up in all of them, in all stages of the money laundering process:

• placement (introducing illicit amounts into the funding of all of them – comingle, front persons, etc.)
• layering (layers of transactions using Politics, War or TikTok in order to put a distance between the illegal source of funds and their destination – high risk jurisdictions, shell companies, cryptocurrencies, etc.)
• integration (funding Politics, War and TikTok with unknown huge illegal amounts in an opaque manner, so that authorities or the public opinion are not aware of them and with the purpose of gaining a certain goal).

But this is not all.

Second – All of them use the same stages as money laundering

1. Politics

Placement = def. “the action of placing someone or something somewhere”

• Candidates can be placed in a strategic manner. Depending on the purpose, they can be either very visible to the public (pushed into the target view through various channels) or kept with a low profile until their moment arises to strike all the bowling balls
• Supporters can be placed in strategic positions (either to influence the public, or to count votes, or even to take the IDs of old, vulnerable and trusty persons to “help” them vote – as it happened to my 89-year old grandmother who lives in the countryside and trusted the local mayor).

Layering = def. “the action of arranging something in layers”

• Layers of promises – the more, the better. It doesn’t matter if they are economically viable or not, if they could actually be implemented or not, nor that the person who promises a rainbow currently holds a certain political power and could have actually delivered many of his promises … if he wanted to. What’s important is to have as many bombastic promises as possible, to catch the eye of the voters, to have layers and layers of promises. A current development is to have the promises delivered by small pieces to the target audience depending on their preferences, sensibilities and hot spots and that is where TikTok appears (but let’s not ruin the surprise).
• Layers of information – real information layered with fake news, layered with dirty underwear from the main candidates’ personal life. If in certain cases the scope is to inform, in other cases the scope is to deliver an already formed opinion to the voters. And in all these layers of televisions, radios, journalists and even influencers, the purpose to create a distance between the truth and the scope of the elections is easier to fulfill.

Integration = def. “the action or process of integrating, of introducing”

• The desired message is integrated – either delivered and processed by the voters, or swallowed as intended in the layering stage. The voters vote as intended and some of them become ardent supporters or activists exaggerating the good of their preferred candidate, while willingly ignoring the bad and the red flags. When a candidate becomes ideal or Messiah, then the voter was wonderfully “layered” in the previous stage and he no longer processes rationally any information received.
• The desired candidate is integrated, while the majority of the voting population is satisfied and hopes for the best – in an ideal world he/she will try his/her best, while in a less ideal world he/she will have to pay the debts accumulated in the above mentioned stages (placement and layering) that led to this integration

2. War – whether classical, informational, cyber, hybrid, etc.

Placement

• Placing pawns – front-men, spies, journalists, integrated people in the government organizations, cybercriminals, etc. Some are hidden and perform their job in an obscure manner, other are very vocals and preach the welfare of their beloved country, while their true intentions are different. In this regard, please read the book “The Fall of Constantinople”, by Vintila Corbu and you will see all the pawns and the mechanisms of this stage.

Layering

• Layering of information – the same as in Politics – layers of real information mixed with fake news, disinformation, false information with the purpose to destabilize, to create fear, uncertainty, in order for the common people to look for Messiah, the savior – please start to make correlations with the previous paragraphs where I mentioned such a Messiah
• Layering of war equipment, layering of tactics, layering of supporters and of statements

Integration

• Integrating war into our lives – this is probably the saddest part of the story. When war becomes “normal” – whether for the oppressor country population (how could war be right?), whether for the oppressed/attacked population, whether for the stand-byers who watch it from the side
• Accepting, starting a war

3. TikTok

Placement

• Placing accounts – open fake accounts:
  • Shelf accounts – inactive accounts, kept on the shelf, ready to be used when the time is right. When they are used, they will seem to be old enough to be real and trustworthy
  • Active, patient accounts with hidden purposes – accounts that may preach for certain values with whom many people can relate (health – both mental and physical, dignity of the individual, patriotism, astrology, etc.), forming an audience that will trust their posts when the right message needs to be delivered
  • Ants or bots – many, many, many accounts, automatically controlled, whose purpose is to systematically and repeatedly propagate a message until it is virally boosted.
• Placing a message

Layering

• Layers and layers of rolling the message – all the above mentioned accounts are activated towards a common goal. The message is started from several accounts and then rolled over through multiple, unbelievable high number of layers of shelf accounts, patient accounts or bots in order to reach the target population.
• Layers of mixed information – the desired message on a certain subject is tailored to the preferences of the viewers. The viewers are served only what is suited to them. The messages on a subject are delivered in parts and pieces – only the pieces with whom the target relates are shown, the other parts with whom the subject doesn’t agree are hidden. And such, a perfect subject appears, people believe that Utopia exists, Messiah is born… and adepts / believers are created.

Integration

• The desired message is integrated – besides fake accounts, real accounts now massively distribute a certain message, a certain subject. They believe in it, it is perfect, it is ideal (because they only saw what they should have seen), Messiah has come, all the rest are non-believers, all other sources of information are fake or lyers.
• The desired message is integrated into other sources of communication / message delivery – other social media, television, radio, journalisms giving it the mass illusion of legitimacy and truth.

Now, combine all 3 of them (Politics, War and TikTok), add large amounts from money laundering, plus the same stages as money laundering detailed above and imagine what can happen.

Mitigation measures

Now that we have seen the risks, which could be the mitigation measures for ourselves, individuals? Let’s analyze them from an AML perspective.

1. Training – Read, read, read – literature, science fiction, historical books, fairies, biographies, etc. The important thing is to train your mind to receive and process information. Or better said, to think for yourself and not just swallow information. Read books, let them seduce you and then cheat them with other books. Ty different genres, different authors. Try, test, read. Train yourself to receive information, process it and form an opinion by yourself.
2. Clean portfolio – if we want to remain in the AML area, let’s remember KYC, CDD, SDD, EDD. Be aware of fanatics, try to stay away from adepts, people who don’t listen to other opinions, to other sources of information, people who are served a message, swallow it and then roll it again and again with fervor, without processing new information. Be aware of people who don’t change their opinion once new information is served and of course, people who don’t read (Rule no. 1 above). Have a clean portfolio around you (offline and online).
3. Monitoring – maybe you don’t like to watch the news, but try to stay anchored in reality. Don’t stick to a single source of information, monitor what is happening around you. In calm, stable periods you can afford simplified monitoring, but try enhanced monitoring in periods of crisis or changes. Information is power.

Conclusion

We have seen that Politics, War and TikTok have many things in common. They can use large amounts of money from money laundering and even copy the stages of money laundering when the purpose requests it.

But, when we talk about precisely delivering a message or taking actions with the intention to form a general opinion, to propagate an idea, to change opinions, to cause people to adopt radical positions on certain subjects and to ignore different information, isn’t there something more? And what would the funding for this scope be called, my dear compliance colleagues?

Radicalization = noun def. “the action or process of causing someone to adopt radical positions on political or social issues.”

By Andreea Tampu, ACAMS, ACSS

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