A Massive Trove of Newly Leaked Documents Shows How Big Banks Help Criminals Move Dirty Money

BuzzFeed News just published an investigation detailing how banks facilitated “the work of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins.”

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On Sunday, BuzzFeed News published an investigative report showing how some of the world’s most powerful banks were aware of—but failed to stop—suspicious transactions totaling more than $2 trillion. Banks profited from these transactions, “facilitating the work of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins,” BuzzFeed writes, and the US government, though aware, rarely intervened.

The investigation was based on a leak of more than 2,100 documents dubbed the “FinCEN Files” that BuzzFeed shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. FinCEN stands for the US Financial Crimes Investigation Network, an agency at the Treasury Department. Banks flag suspicious transactions made in US dollars to the agency, but most are not investigated; meanwhile, just by filing a report, a bank “all but immunizes itself and its executives from criminal prosecution,” BuzzFeed writes. 

A trove of those reports, from transactions between 1999 and 2017, make up the FinCEN Files. Journalists digging into the documents found that they documented transactions facilitating suspected Russian and Taliban money launderers, a Ponzi scheme, and corrupt politicians. Meanwhile, even banks that were previously fined for failing to stop the flow of dirty money—including JPMorgan, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon—continued the same behavior, and continued to profit from it. 

Read the investigations here and here

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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