Media Information
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Released: 04 January, 2005
The Anti Money Laundering Network Limited, parent company of Vortex Centrum Limited, publishers of World Money Laundering Report: Online issued the following statement on 4 January 2005. We wish to thank all of those who took time to ask whether our teams in South East Asia were OK following the tsunami that resulted from the earthquake that took place on the morning of 26th December 2004. In fact, although we as a group do have people in Malaysia and Thailand, we were all extremely fortunate and no one was directly affected by the events. We feel fortunate because some of us had been planning to be in Penang and would have been on a beach near to Batu Ferringhi when the wave struck, and others planned to be in the islands off, or on the coast of, southern Thailand. For a variety of reasons, plans were changed immediately before Christmas and we were all in either Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok at the time the wave struck. Those of us who had flown in, some from Europe, on Christmas Eve felt especially lucky as there is no doubt that the flights we were aboard bore some of those who are now dead, injured or missing. We feel very fortunate to have escaped, both individually and corporately. We know well the areas affected in both Malaysia and Thailand and feel deeply for the people who have lost their livelihoods and any prospect of recovery in the short to medium term. Especially vulnerable are the fishing communities. Many of these are shallow-water fishermen who use small boats, in some cases dugouts, fishing with small nets and lines. These small boats are not expensive to westerners but many were uninsured and, for those who have lost everything, to replace the boats is impossibly costly. It is these fishermen that we would like to assist. We would like to raise funds to replace small fishing boats, nets and lines. We believe that the return to the water by surviving fishermen will provide both normality and feed both work and income into the lowest end of the economy in the coastal regions. World Money Laundering Report: Online has a proposal to assist these people: for every subscription to World Money Laundering Report: Online ordered and paid for during January 2005, we will pass the full amount of the subscription to national relief funds in Malaysia (25%) and Thailand (75%) with a specific request that the funds be used for the replacement of boats and equipment lost to the tsunami. The difference between the country contributions is a rough estimate of the length of affected coastline and is not a precise calculation. As you will be purchasing a service, i.e. a subscription to WMLR: O, you will be eligible for relevant tax relief on that purchase, not as a charitable donation. World Money Laundering Report: Digest, our free weekly newsletter, is read by more than 10,000 people weekly. If each reader purchased just one subscription to WMLR: Online, then approximately GBP1.5 million would be raised. This would, we estimate, replace at least 150 boats, engines and equipment along the coasts and in the islands of Malaysia and Thailand making both an immediate and long term improvement to the communities affected. So if you want to help, what do you have to do? Just click on the link below and place an order. If you do not want to help the WMLR:O effort, then please consider making a contribution to e.g. The Red Cross, Red Crescent or Médecins Sans Frontières (in the USA called "Doctors without borders"). Why do we recommend only these three organisations? The Red Cross and Red Crescent are integrated at international level and they maximise the proportionof donations that make it to the relief objective: most other large charities spend much higher proportions on non-core activities and on management and administration. Médecins Sans Frontières was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. In an interview with Australian broadcaster ABC, one of their team, Peter Hakewill said at the time " Perhaps once or twice a year I can go home and tell my children hey, today I saved a life, you know, from working here in Sydney as a GP but working in Southern Sudan or in East Timor or in Bangladesh during the cholera last year I could honestly say that perhaps 20 or 30 - I don't know - 40 times a day I was ... something I did was saving a life." Again, MSF focuses on its core activities of putting medical practitioners on the ground in hostile environments and its reports on health matters are factual and authoritative. MSF regularly loses its personnel to hostile forces in battle zones but dedicated medics sign up to replace them. Links: The Anti Money Laundering Network: Press Index The Anti Money Laundering Network: Home
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