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The name sounds strange, but it should keep everyone’s financial centers busy for a while: the so-called Fincen Archives. The abbreviation stands for Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the US money laundering reporting bureau, the world’s largest economy.
The Fincen-Files have been in the headlines around the world since Sunday night. Because these files contain around 2,100 reports of alleged money laundering from US banks that have been evaluated by an international investigation network, including Swiss media such as the “Tages-Anzeiger”.
2000 billion dollars
2,100 suspicious transaction reports does not seem like much at first, spread over a period from 2008 to 2017. However, these are transactions for 2 billion dollars. By no means all criminal, but at least raising suspicions of money laundering.
As the “Tages-Anzeiger” writes, several hundred suspicious transaction reports are related to Switzerland. Because when Swiss financial institutions transact in dollars, they must transact through their connection with a US bank. However, the barrier to suspicious transaction reporting in the US is also much lower than in Switzerland.
International cooperation
Data from the United States Department of the Treasury reached the Buzzfeed online portal. American journalists shared the files with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). More than 400 journalists from 90 countries set out to show how banks and authorities have failed in the fight against money laundering. Fincen’s files show, for example, how dubious funds from Venezuela reached Switzerland unhindered.
Investigations around the world show that major international banks such as HSBC, Standard Chartered and JPMorgan transferred hundreds of billions of dollars a year in total, although they suspected that the transferred money was attributable to despots, corrupt oligarchs, drug traffickers or other actors. troublesome.
