2024-02-02 11:30:50
Around the world, artificial intelligence systems, AI, are already being used to develop a new and contemporary relationship between the taxpayer and the various tax branches (artificial intelligence works in different countries in the world, in the service of the tax systems).
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Israel boasts the title of “Startup Nation”, therefore it is only natural that Israel is a place to make use of the new technology that is flooding the world. The Israeli treasury lacks capital, a lot of capital is missing from the state coffers to finance the war and to finance a security budget that will inevitably swell in the years to come, to ensure that Mada does not fall a second time, that the surprise of the Yom Kippur war does not return and the Simchat Torah disaster does not repeat itself.
In Canada, for example, artificial intelligence is openly used to eradicate the phenomena of money laundering. The artificial intelligence systems in Canada discovered money transfers suspected of involving financial crimes. The central monitoring and reporting system for illegal financial activity, under the body called in Canada the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center – FINTRAC, a kind of equivalent of the Authority for the Prohibition of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in Israel, fined the two largest banks in Canada at the end of last year, Royal Bank of Canada and CIBC for a total of 9 million Canadian dollars for failing to report suspicious money transfers to the supervisory authority. It was the artificial intelligence that discovered the offenses.
According to an estimate, money laundering in Canada continues and the annual volume is estimated at 100 billion Canadian dollars and up to 130 billion Canadian dollars, according to the CD Howe Research Institute, the independent non-profit whose goal is to raise the standard of living in Canada. This amount is equal to about 4% of GDP of Canada The Canadian government has added more budgets and more personnel to FINTRAC in order to reach real-time illegal financial transfers, some of which are feared to be intended for terrorist financing.
In North America and Europe, they are already thinking about the revolution of the 21st century, according to which artificial intelligence will not require the taxpayer to fill out forms and fields on an income tax computer or through an accountant, all information flows automatically and continuously and the system initiates the collection of taxes or refunds directly from or to the taxpayer’s account – all through A system of artificial intelligence algorithms.
The tax authorities will be able to automatically extract data from all sources in the economic activity – shopping, deliveries, payments, payroll systems and banking activity – and generate tax liabilities or tax refunds in real time. Mega data will be enormous with the increasing use of network-based computing systems of memory chips, with calculation and response capabilities that will produce data at high speed and at a decreasing cost.
The US is increasing subsidies for advanced memory manufacturers, so as not to be dependent on supplies from abroad. According to a report by the OECD, 40 countries are already using artificial intelligence to promote an efficient and fair tax system. In the USA, Canada and Spain, the system is used to detect fraud and fraud.
Total Recall
Israel, which is engaged in the war against terrorism, is a few steps behind. True, in 2002, 22 years ago, the “Authority for the Prohibition of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing” was established, located in the Ministry of Justice. The Authority needs and must assist Israel’s intelligence agencies and the government to track down money laundering offenses, from there the path is short to the production of money intended to finance terrorist activities, to accumulate capacity for terrorism and to damage the basis of Israel’s economic power.
The Authority for the Prohibition of Money Laundering in Israel operates today under the Anti-Terrorism Law, 2016. The Authority in Israel works in close cooperation with the Israel Police and also with international bodies dealing with the issue, such as FATF, which gave recommendations on how the enforcement authorities can make use of advanced technologies to investigate cases of money laundering and financing terrorism.
The Financial Action Task Force – FATF, an international body of the 7 rich countries that was established in 1989, pointed out last year the increasing use of extortion and sophistication through ransom as well as the increasing use of virtual assets. The use of virtual assets such as crypto-currencies makes it difficult for the authorities in the world and in Israel to track terrorist funds.
The Authority for the Prohibition of Money Laundering in Israel has no investigative powers. It transfers relevant information from the huge database it accumulates, according to law, only when there is suspicion of money laundering or of course terrorist financing. The main source of reporting to the Authority for the Prohibition of Money Laundering in Israel is from the financial system in Israel as a whole. The question is whether the authority in Israel with its number of employees, according to the new budget book, has only 50 employees, and its budget is 37 million shekels at the most, can or could have prevented the flow of money to the terrorism that surrounds us from all sides – when the peak is of course the blow we received on the 7 in October 2023.
The Authority could make use of artificial intelligence to catch fat fish, not only in money laundering offenses but also in connection with terrorist financing, after all the word “terror” appears in the title of its name and role, isn’t it? With the manpower that the state has allocated to it and the pennies in its budget, it is clear that the Authority for the Prohibition of Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism has no power to really act for sufficient disclosure and exposure of the clearance, routing, shipping, financing and payments for the Palestinian terrorism that killed us.
Self-study
Artificial intelligence makes it possible to carry out many activities: cross-detailed information transfers, which are drawn from various sources in order to deeply challenge the system for combating money laundering and terrorist financing, for example through questions and answers, a dialogue between systems, which could not be carried out before, certainly not for big data and at the required speed.
The artificial intelligence can examine system structures and trace human actions resulting from its self-learning, a kind of self-learning machine, LEARNING MACHINE, which increases its ability from time to time. In the report of the Authority for the Prohibition of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing for 2022, it reported to the authorized bodies that received from it in one year information on 170 thousand unusual activities (compared to 3.2 million normal activities of the naqabim), according to law and another 12 thousand customs reports.
Most of the extracts of the reports on suspicion of illegal activity were sent to the police, 63%. The tax authority has 13% and the defense system only 9%. The authority found that in the last two years, 2021-2022, 23% of the crimes that were the basis of money laundering, were fraud, deceit and forgery, 21% were an increasing use of tax crimes including falsifying tax invoices, 13% as part of the activities of criminal organizations, 20% as a result of an increase in activity international and 17% illegal activity in cash. About 14% of the activity was from financial service providers, such as money changers, and another 12% was carried out using credit cards.
A clear increase was recorded among the money changers, 91 thousand cases of unusual activity among money changers, an increase of 291% within five years, yes over 290%.
An increase on such a scale among the financial service providers (exchangers) should have turned on a red light not only with the tax authorities but also immediately with the General Security Service, which should understand – and investigate where money coming from abroad and turning into Israeli money is routed.
For this you don’t need artificial intelligence but only rational thinking. As soon as the funds from abroad were converted into shekels through the money changers (or “Hwala”, in Arabic fiduciary, a transfer of money between trustees: one pays in a certain country and the beneficiary receives the money in an unknown country, without transferring money, but an ongoing accounting between the two entities that express trust in each other, so can be between a money changer in Judea and Samaria and its counterpart in Lebanon) it is easier to purchase equipment and materials in Israel through Gazan merchants, who work directly with invoices and receipts with Israeli merchants, who “export” to Gaza more and more construction materials from Israel, including cement and chemicals for “civilian” use.
The eyes of the Israelis watered when they saw what was done with the cement that goes to Gaza and their ears stopped when they heard the construction noises of a huge system of well-concreted tunnels for hundreds of kilometers. Money talks and it is what blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous, not the war on terror.
Terrorist banking
One of the main sources of information for the Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Authority is the Israeli banking system. Nowhere in the Anti-Money Laundering Authority’s report is there any information about cross-referencing information with the eight Palestinian banks in Judea and Samaria with the reported Israeli banking system. Seven banks are located in Ramallah. Unbelievable, but until May of last year it was still possible for security prisoners to have bank accounts in the Palestinian banking system, but an Israeli order forced these accounts to be closed.
In fact, terrorist funds were an integral part of the banking system in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. The Israelis, the security establishment in Judea and Samaria, turned a blind eye as they turned a blind eye to the arming of Hamas, maintained industrial peace or rather commercial peace.
It was only after the massacre in October that the Israeli government – the IDF, the Shin Bet, the cyber unit of 433 and other governmental bodies – remembered, at the end of December, to confiscate tens of millions of shekels of terrorist funds in Judea and Samaria belonging to Hamas. What and who did the Israelis raid? on 28 exchange offices. Has the terrorist financing picture suddenly become clearer? The scourge of the state in the field of terrorist financing are the money changers working with fellow money changers in Arab countries, especially in Lebanon.
I ask why do we need the Authority for the Prohibition of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, if everything was visible to the Israeli authorities who turned a blind eye in order to maintain “industrial” peace (including the transfer of cash by the Qataris with Israel’s approval to finance the strengthening of Hamas)? After all, the problem of the money changers, the money changers, appears openly in the report of the Anti-Money Laundering and War on Terrorism Authority, which pointed to the problem of the huge increase in the activity of money changers, without mentioning the problem of terrorist financing involved in this? It seems to me that not only Israel played.
Worse than that, the USA, under whose protection Israel is, also turned a blind eye. The USA, which actually controls the mighty global money transfer and payment system SWIFT, along with the West, expelled Russia and Iran from using this system, which is vital to every living economy in the world. Note that the Americans did not stop the Gaza terrorists of Hamas.
In fact, the US allowed (in Israel News), banks in Gaza, such as the Muslim Bank and the Palestinian Arab Bank, to remain connected to the global SWIFT. This status allowed inter-bank transfers from all over the world, in fact to finance and strengthen Hamas – as “Calcalist” published from a deputy director Eran Kamin, retired head of the Yaha unit, economic crime investigator familiar with Gaza banking.
Perhaps Israel does not need artificial intelligence systems at all as the nations of the world operate, perhaps we will initially be content with only the human intelligence of an honest person, from the security, government and enforcement systems – and not with unfounded work assumptions, accompanied by arrogance. Maybe we could have prevented the disaster on October 7 – at least that’s what humble human understanding says.
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