Update 1 Dec 2020: PPRO Financial is not an unregulated payment processor. It is an FCA-regulated e-Money Institution with the unregulated German parent company PPRO Holding GmbH.
The undisputed truth is that Deutsche Handelsbank has appeared as a payment processor in many binary options and broker scams. Moreover, the BaFin-regulated German institution is an intermediary of other regulated payment processors such as MoneyNetint, which also support scams. The European Fund Recovery Initiative (EFRI), co-founded by FinTelegram, has filed a corresponding complaint to BaFin. The German regulator finally officially ordered Deutsche Handelsbank to implement appropriate AML measures to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.
FinTelegram investigations of dozens of binary options, Forex, and broker scams have shown that Deutsche Handelsbank (www.handelsbank.com) has accepted operators of scams as clients. Among others, the bank was one of the payment processors of Gal Barak‘s cybercrime organization. In the course of the Vienna Cybercrime Trials (#VCT) at the beginning of September 2020, Gal Barak was sentenced to a four-year prison term and restitution payment in the millions. Barak was able to avoid a higher sentence by confessing and continuing to cooperate with Law Enforcement.
Like the collapsed KBH Andelskasse, Deutsche Handelsbank is also acting as an intermediate and partner of numerous other regulated e-money institutions such as MoneyNetint or Connectum or PPRO Financial which are all known for facilitating scams and cybercrime with their financial services and thus engage in money-laundering.
Both MoneyNetint and Deutsche Handelsbank, for example, supported the gigantic Zoo Broker Scam network as payment processors and supported scam operators like the offshore company Silver Wolf Limited. So both MoneyNetint and Deutsche Handelsbank know the people behind the Zoo Broker Scam network and should probably share this knowledge voluntarily with the law enforcement authorities.
Shortly we will publish a more detailed report about the Deutsche Handelsbank and its involvement in the global scam business.
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In case, you do have any information on Deutsche Handelsbank, MoneyNetint, or any other payment processor facilitating scams please share it with our FinTelegram Research team via our whistleblower system.