Dirty Money, Criminal Cash: Bank Leaks Allege Vast Scale of Global Fraud
Henry Ridgwell, 20 September 2020
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.
