Major US Banks Found to Facilitate Movement of Weapon and Drug Money
Major US financial institutions, including JP Morgan and Standard Chartered, have been revealed by a Buzzfeed News investigation to be facilitating the movement of dirty money worldwide. While they act as a vital accessory to crime around the world, they receive little recourse from the US government. Source.
The world’s most powerful and successful banks moving large volumes of dirty money from the drugs cartels and organized crime ring affiliates sounds like a plot taken straight from a Netflix original series. While such an idea might seem tough to conceptualize in real life, a recent Buzzfeed News investigation uncovered that many big name U.S. and international banks have been moving trillions of dollars for two decades in suspicious transactions, and in the process enriching themselves off the dirty money. This money is used to fund crimes for drug cartels, terrorist organizations, and corrupt foreign leaders – and there seems to be little done by the US government to stop it.
Some of the largest U.S. and international banks such as JP Morgan, Bank of America and Standard Charted are able to profit off this money as it flows throughout the bank network and fees are collected. Through reviewing documents known as ‘suspicious activity reports’ (SARS), which banks file when they suspect they are facilitating criminal activity, Buzzfeed in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists compiled a list of more than 2,100 documents that offer an “unprecedented view of global financial corruption, the banks enabling it, and the government agencies that watch as it flourishes.”
In September, Buzzfeed released some of these files known as the “FinCEN Files”. FinCEN, short for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is an agency under the U.S. Treasury Department that handles money laundering, terrorist financing, and other criminal activity. Banks are required to report any concerns about suspicious money to FinCEN through SARS, and once reported, banks are essentially immunized from any criminal persecution linked to the dirty money. The money is still able to flow throughout the bank network and into the hands of criminal to engage in illegal activities such as human trafficking or funding deadly wars, and the banks are able still able to profit off of it and remain largely untouched.
Some of Buzzfeed’s findings include banks like JP Morgan being linked to facilitating the movement of more than $150 million for companies tied to the Kim Regime in North Korea - known human rights violators, and more than $1 billion associated with a fraud involving a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. Additionally, Standard Chartered is suspected of moving funds for a company that reportedly has ties to the Taliban.
In the rare instance that the U.S. government does decide to crack down on banking institutions that engage in money laundering, a deal is usually worked out between the two parties that only involves fines. When these banks are penalized by the U.S. and other authorities, it rarely leads to actual criminal prosecution of bank affiliates or executives. The FinCEN Files highlight just how much large banking institutions work with and around dirty money, while receiving no real punishment or dissuasion from the federal government to stop such malicious activity