Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 126 posts

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#31

Post by oasisbob »

vorpalhex wrote: post #21
m-nolan wrote: post #2

"However, the filing of an SAR does not require the bank to cease doing business with the client in question." This feels broken. Was this intended to prevent competitors from falsely filing SARs against each other to freeze their business? What are the penalties for abusing this system?

A SAR just means activity is suspicious. That's it - a SAR is not by itself evidence of wrongdoing, just a report to take a deeper look. "Hey, this persons makes mostly foreign transactions with vague companies" is a SAR. That's not a crime, and it may not be criminal behavior - it's just an indicator that someone should look closer. Can you imagine if your bank closed your account and refused to do business with you…

> how many times have you had to call your credit card provider because they stopped a transaction just because it was suspicious, even when it wasn't?

Ugh. I'd pay more for a credit card which didn't block my own transactions. Using a US credit card abroad can be seriously frustrating.

The only thing worse than rapidly increasing airfares on small airlines with websites which barely work is when your credit card refuses to complete the transaction, requiring multiple international phone calls to resolve.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#32

Post by vmception »

syspec wrote: post #4

> In a statement released earlier this month FinCEN condemned the disclosure of the leaked documents and said it had referred the matter to the US Department of Justice. > “The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is aware that various media outlets intend to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed suspicious activity reports (SARs), as well as other sensitive government documents, from several yea…

Government response: Stop spamming us with SARs

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#33

Post by shrubble »

SARs are filed automatically any time the amount is over a certain number, I think the simplest one is at $10k and then there is a more detailed one for some larger threshold amount. There must be millions filed per week.

Have never been able to determine if what someone told me is true... that publicly traded companies are exempt from many of these regulations.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#34

Post by vmception »

xvector wrote: post #12
syspec wrote: post #4

> In a statement released earlier this month FinCEN condemned the disclosure of the leaked documents and said it had referred the matter to the US Department of Justice. > “The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is aware that various media outlets intend to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed suspicious activity reports (SARs), as well as other sensitive government documents, from several yea…

Seriously. If the reports are “years old” then there is no excuse for these to not have been dealt with.

SARs are just spam. There is nothing to deal with. No different than an oddly named receipt.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#35

Post by beh9540 »

m-nolan wrote: post #2

"However, the filing of an SAR does not require the bank to cease doing business with the client in question." This feels broken. Was this intended to prevent competitors from falsely filing SARs against each other to freeze their business? What are the penalties for abusing this system?

SARs are required to be reported for all daily cash deposits greater than $10K by the Bank Secrecy Act.[1]

Cash heavy businesses could easily hit this level, as well as large transactions that are perfectly legal, so you wouldn't want to stop doing business with a customer, just because they deposited a large amount of cash.

[1] https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/supervision-and-examination...

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#36

Post by vmception »

me_me_me wrote: post #24
jaywalk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is saying these haven't been dealt with? Filing a SAR doesn't mean the person is guilty, as the name indicates it's just suspicious.

I dunno, but Collateral Damage, Snowden panama papers... Imagine if they spend 10% of resources that they spent going after leakers punishing real perpetrators.

SARs are just spam. There is nothing to deal with. Its an odd name for a receipt that gets printed at the bank's discretion.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#37

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

syspec wrote: post #4

> In a statement released earlier this month FinCEN condemned the disclosure of the leaked documents and said it had referred the matter to the US Department of Justice. > “The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is aware that various media outlets intend to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed suspicious activity reports (SARs), as well as other sensitive government documents, from several yea…

absolutely no doubt that this is a feature of the system.

I recently read "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who stole the world" and can't recommend it highly enough. It shows that tax fraud and offshore banking is despite propaganda that "it's dead" very much alive and the US is a central player now. Hollywood still uses Switzerland and the Cayman's but a lot more convenient are setups involving Nevada, New Mexico, etc.

Offshore banking is a key component in maintaining control when an empire retreats/collapses. The French installed puppets in Gabon who let them launder their money until today in a similar fashion that the City of London and the more reckless jurisdictions (BVI) allowed the Brits to keep their loot which they stole in the past 200 years.

we had a chance to burn all this to the ground during the financial crisis but Occupy Wallstreet was just a "leaflet campaign" without teeth. You don't fight a real enemy that subverts the rules of democracy with democratic tools.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands:_Tax_Havens_a...

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#38

Post by vmception »

beh9540 wrote: post #35
m-nolan wrote: post #2

"However, the filing of an SAR does not require the bank to cease doing business with the client in question." This feels broken. Was this intended to prevent competitors from falsely filing SARs against each other to freeze their business? What are the penalties for abusing this system?

SARs are required to be reported for all daily cash deposits greater than $10K by the Bank Secrecy Act.[1] Cash heavy businesses could easily hit this level, as well as large transactions that are perfectly legal, so you wouldn't want to stop doing business with a customer, just because they deposited a large amount of cash. [1] https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/supervision-and-examination...

and the threshold is not inflation linked, or location linked. it is just a 50 year misused law that has successfully spent the last half-century stigmatizing the concept of having money to move in the minds of people without money who want it.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#39

Post by TallGuyShort »

vorpalhex wrote: post #21
m-nolan wrote: post #2

"However, the filing of an SAR does not require the bank to cease doing business with the client in question." This feels broken. Was this intended to prevent competitors from falsely filing SARs against each other to freeze their business? What are the penalties for abusing this system?

A SAR just means activity is suspicious. That's it - a SAR is not by itself evidence of wrongdoing, just a report to take a deeper look. "Hey, this persons makes mostly foreign transactions with vague companies" is a SAR. That's not a crime, and it may not be criminal behavior - it's just an indicator that someone should look closer. Can you imagine if your bank closed your account and refused to do business with you…

Or to put it another way, how do you like it when your content gets DMCA'd with no investigation and no recourse, because the enforcer doesn't want the liability and can't actually investigate? That's what would happen is SARS had to be treated as though they were proof of crimes.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#40

Post by kjaftaedi »

pkphilip wrote: post #25

$2 trillion? I thought the latest figure was $35 Trillion - and thats just from the Pentagon https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-35-trillion-accounti...

So many things wrong with this comment.

The 2 trillion we are talking about is 'corrupt' financial activity. Money laundering and this sort of thing.

Pentagon financial adjustments are not even close to being related.

Lastly the article you posted says 35 trillion in adjustments, but doesn't say how far back in time they went making adjustments, so that number is meaningless. Whoever this reporter is seems to not be familiar with accounting or finance.

Post reply on HN