It's certain that many/most of the increase in Chinese massage parlours over the last few years is due to a need by the OCGs to find a money laundering route for their takings from drugs, people trafficking & protection rackets. They simply overdeclare the parlour turnover and so legitimise the dirty cash by paying it into the parlour bank account.
Touring Roms and Brazilians not declaring earnings is something completely different. They'll just be taking the cash and smuggling it out of the country using Western Digital, Easycash or similar
It's much harder to launder cash use money transfer services than it has been, even doing bank transfers is a challenge. Foreign banks will often withhold funds and not release them, until you can provide a legitimate proof of source - they will probably ask the SP for wage slips etc. Most Brazilian banks seem to have a no returns policy, if you don't provide the required proof (i.e. wage slips etc), they don't return the funds. That applies to both money transfer services and direct bank transfers.
I can see why OCG's would go to the lengths of setting up "front" businesses. Business accounts with large inflow of funds, are less likely to get questioned. In the past they would have channelled the money through an individual account (using a stooge), but this is very hard to do now and gets spotted quickly once the flow of cash starts to add up.
The whole money laundering thing, whilst understandable, is slowing things down.
I'm struggling to make both legitimate bank to bank transfers and via payment services. In the past couple of months I have made two transfers to Chinese Companies using Currencies Direct ($13K USD and $21K USD). The money came from my personal bank account. I had to prove with paperwork where the money came from. This was followed up by having a telephone interview with someone from CD. I had to explain what the money was for, did I know the company, was I associated with them. I then had to explain why I was buying what I was buying.
In the past month I've had two UK bank transfers halted using my Revolut personal account. One was was to a UK limited company for £1,400 who have been established for over 30 years. The transaction was flagged up as fraudulent. I had to complete an online questionnaire and the money was held up for over 24 hours, and I had to provide a copy of their invoice. For the personal transfer, I got stuck in some never ending loop about the money being invested in a scam job offer. It took two days to resolve.
I did a much smaller ($550 USD) transfer to a new Chinese Company last week, direct from my Revolut bank account, it went straight through.
I know that some of this is to prevent APP fraud scams, but the receivers were both long standing UK bank account holders.
I never have these issues when sending money from my MetroBank Business account.
