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Dirty Money, Criminal Cash: Bank Leaks Allege Vast Scale of Global Fraud

Henry Ridgwell

   Leaked documents allege that some of the world's largest banks have
   allowed $2 trillion worth of suspicious or fraudulent activity to take
   place, including money laundering for criminal gangs and terrorists.
   The so-called "FinCEN Files" consist of more than 2,000 Suspicious
   Activity Reports, or SARs, sent by banks to the U.S. Treasury, alerting
   the authorities to possible criminal activity, from 1999 and 2017. The
   files were leaked to Buzzfeed and shared with a global network of
   investigative journalists.
   The documents allege that British giant HSBC transferred $80 million of
   fraudulent money via the United States to Hong Kong as part of an
   illegal Ponzi scheme, despite earlier warnings from U.S. authorities.
   The documents also say U.S. bank JP Morgan Chase moved $1 billion
   through a London account that it later discovered may have belonged to
   Semion Mogilevich, a Russian mafia boss still on the FBI's Most Wanted
   list.
   German firm Deutsche Bank is accused of transferring dirty cash from
   money launderers with links to organized criminal gangs and terrorists.
   A bank spokesperson, Joerg Eigendorf, said Monday that the transactions
   were all historic.
   "What's being reported now is not new, not to us and not to our
   supervisory authority. Everything has been processed and we had a very
   close look at everything. But most importantly, we have made huge
   investments in this [compliance] sector since 2015," Eigendorf told
   reporters.
   Standard Chartered and Bank of New York Mellon also appear several
   times in the leaks. All the banks involved say they fully comply with
   laws and regulations and that the cases are historic.

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