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Thousands of documents detailing $ 2 trillion (£ 1.55 trillion) of potentially corrupt transactions that were swept up in the US financial system have been leaked to an international group of investigative journalists.
The leak focuses on more than 2,000 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed with the U.S. government’s Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
Banks and other financial institutions file SARs when they believe a customer is using their services for possible criminal activity.
However, filing a SAR does not require the bank to stop doing business with the customer in question.
The documents were turned over to BuzzFeed News, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The documents are said to suggest that major banks provided financial services to high-risk individuals around the world, in some cases even after being sanctioned by the US government.
According to the ICIJ, the documents refer to more than $ 2 trillion in transactions dating from 1999 to 2017.
One of those named in the SARs is Paul Manafort, a political strategist who ran Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign for several months.
He resigned after his consulting job for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was exposed, and was later convicted of fraud and tax evasion.
According to the ICIJ, banks began to flag Manafort-related activity as suspicious starting in 2012. In 2017, JP Morgan Chase submitted a report on wire transfers worth more than $ 300 million involving shell companies in Cyprus that had done business with Manafort.
The ICIJ said Manafort’s attorney did not respond to an invitation to comment.
A separate report details more than $ 1 billion in bank transfers from JP Morgan Chase that the bank later suspected were linked to Semion Mogilevich, a suspected Russian organized crime boss who is on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list.
A JP Morgan Chase spokesperson told the BBC: “We follow all laws and regulations in support of the government’s work to combat financial crime. We dedicate thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars to this important work. “
According to BBC Panorama, the British bank HSBC allowed a group of criminals to transfer millions of dollars from a Ponzi scheme through their accounts, even after they had identified their fraud.
HSBC said in a statement: “Beginning in 2012, HSBC embarked on a multi-year journey to review its ability to combat financial crime in more than 60 jurisdictions.” He added: “HSBC is a much more secure institution than it was in 2012.”
In a statement issued earlier this month, FinCEN condemned the release of the leaked documents and said it had referred the matter to the US Department of Justice.
“The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is aware that various media outlets intend to publish a series of articles based on illegally disclosed suspicious activity reports (RAS), as well as other sensitive government documents, from several years ago,” he said.
“As FinCEN has previously stated, the unauthorized disclosure of RAS is a crime that can affect the national security of the United States, compromise police investigations, and threaten the safety of the institutions and individuals who make such reports.”
