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The documents have been leaked to the Buzzfeed News site in the USA, which has given them to the international network of journalists ICIJ, which includes SVT.
These are the so-called suspicion or money laundering reports that banks send to the US Financial Police Fincen about alleged criminal transactions.
The US bank leak provides unique insight into how drug dealers and con artists block their profits beyond the long arm of the law, how politicians and oligarchs loot money around the world that they have looted at the expense of the welfare of ordinary people.
“They see the consequences daily”
“People may not know much about money laundering and companies in tax havens, but they see the consequences on a daily basis because this is what makes large-scale crime worthwhile, from drug smuggling and weapons to unemployment benefits related to COVID-19, “says Jodi Vittori, a corruption expert from the United States.
The journalists’ network has identified a number of people who have suffered greatly from money laundering, which may otherwise seem abstract.
One of them was Joe Williams, 31, a father of four in North Carolina, who died in 2014 of an overdose of fentanyl, a very deadly opioid. The proceeds from that particular batch of drugs were laundered through the banking system to the supplier in China.
Ukraine’s Nadezhda Kulinich, in turn, was killed when a tower collapsed in a coal mine in 2011. The state mine had fallen into disrepair and was looted by those in power, who looted hundreds of millions of crowns in abroad.
Dozens of politicians in the document
The leak includes thieves who sold stolen Buddhist art treasures to galleries in New York. The art market is relatively unregulated and therefore easy to use for money laundering. Another example is a Venezuelan real estate mogul who shot himself in a precarious home.
The documents include dozens of politicians, their families and assistants, including former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, convicted of economic crimes.
There are strange payments here, like SEK 14 million for “sweets” from the Ministry of Commerce in seriously corrupt Turkmenistan. The sum went to a Scottish mailbox company with a hidden owner and a bank account in Latvia.
In total, flows of SEK 17 billion can be seen in the leak. Despite the inconceivable sum, the documents represent only 0.02 percent of the 12 million reports Fincen received in 2011-2017.
Note: Here you can see graphics of the reveal. (External page in English)
