Drug cartels, trafficking rings, money launderers and terror networks... Sounds like the premise of every Netflix show — actually the criminal groups that big banks enabled, according to new investigative reports by BuzzFeed and others. JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, and Deutsche Bank were among those implicated in (drumroll please)...
- “The FinCEN Files”: These secret documents allegedly reveal how bank giants moved trillions of $$$ in suspicious transactions, helping criminals launder money.
- Money laundering: The (very illegal) practice of making “dirty money” clean by passing it through legit transfers/transactions.
A bad case of "filed away"... Banks are required to report large cash transactions and suspicious activities through SARS (aka: Suspicious Activity Reports). Then, FinCEN — the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the Treasury Department — is supposed to share that info with law enforcement, regulators, etc. who enforce the law (if necessary). While banks raised red flags, they still continued processing suspicious transactions.
We need better oversight... Money laundering enables terrible crimes, and legit institutions have enabled money laundering. As long as a bank files a SAR, it essentially immunizes itself from criminal prosecution. It could file one and still accept a sketchy transaction. The FinCEN Files include over 2,000 SARS, not all of which are necessarily reflective of actual crimes — but some were, and the banks and FinCEN didn't stop them.