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Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

theguardian.com

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

#61

Post by vmception »

defterGoose wrote: post #49
vmception wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're right. this is the weakest leak, specifically aimed to perturb the public consciousness. the legislature called them "Suspicious Activity Reports" and then forget they did it. but they are "Useless Spam Reports". An investigative journalist decided to use the name and the current sentiment against "Banks" and "money" to write these articles.

"Crimes don't matter" "Democracy doesn't matter" "Nothing matters" "You should just accept it" Does that sum it up pretty well? You seem to have a pretty vested interest in this being ignored if judged by the volume of similar comments you've left in this thread.

I have a general interest in people understanding what this is.

A suspicious activity report is not about a crime, it isn't about anything being suspected of a crime or even actually suspicious.

SARs are an ill thought compliance nuance created by Congress 50 years ago with a ridiculous name.

The headline even has a vested interested in covering its own ass with the wording "possibly corrupt" because their own legal department was like "really?" and the editor in chief was like "but think of the clicks!"

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

#62

Post by ceejayoz »

simon1ltd wrote: post #51

It might help if anyone paid attention to what a SAR IS: https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/supervision-and-examination... Keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, File reports of cash transactions exceeding $10,000 (daily aggregate amount), and Report suspicious activity that might signal criminal activity (e.g., money laundering, tax evasion) If you do more than $10,000 in cash business/transactions,…

Hang on, that's mixing two things.

Transactions over $10k aren't automatically a SAR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_transaction_report

> CTRs since 1996 include an optional checkbox at the top if the bank employee believes the transaction to be suspicious or fraudulent, commonly called a SAR, or Suspicious Activity Referral.

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

#63

Post by sneak »

wemblee wrote: post #47
shrubble wrote: post #33

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.

That's incorrect. You're confusing SARs with CTRs, which are reports of cash transactions. SARs are for the most part at the discretion of bank compliance officers, although there are a few "automatic" ones.

SARs are required any time someone is asked to fill out a CTR (which they can be, by the bank, optionally, for any amount) and declines to do so.

Imagine going to your bank and trying to withdraw $3000 or $5000 in cash, and them asking you to fill out a CTR out of an abundance of caution (like the fact that you’ve never made a cash withdrawal of that size before).

Don’t feel like filling out extra forms to get access to your own money? In a hurry and don’t have time? Decline the CTR and say you’ll deal with it another time?

It’s now a criminal offense for the bank to not file a SAR based on your refusal to complete the requested CTR.

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

#64

Post by ericd »

mabbo wrote: post #53

> The leak focuses on more than 2,000 suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed with the US government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). I think it's important to get the right mindset on what these are before we cry foul. All banks will report 'large' transactions to their country's Financial Intelligence bureau. In the US, that's FINCEN. In Canada, that's FINTRAC, where I interned way back in 2006. He…

So anyone who's ever bought a house in the US or Canada has had an SAR about them?

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

#65

Post by sharkweek »

simon1ltd wrote: post #51

It might help if anyone paid attention to what a SAR IS: https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/supervision-and-examination... Keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, File reports of cash transactions exceeding $10,000 (daily aggregate amount), and Report suspicious activity that might signal criminal activity (e.g., money laundering, tax evasion) If you do more than $10,000 in cash business/transactions,…

As a former bank teller let me tell you all the brilliant ways people would try to get around this.

* Depositing $9,999 cash (yeah, still gonna report that)

* Depositing random X,000 cash increments across multiple transactions (yeah, still going to report that)

* Making cash deposits across multiple locations in the same day/week (as if the computer didn’t alert us to multiple cash deposits)

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

#66

Post by christocracy »

I wire-transfer tens-of-thousands of USD / month from my bank to my wealth-management company for perfectly valid reasons (e-commerce revenue), primarily to exchange to CAD (far better rate than bank) for funding payroll and/or purchase Investments.

With each transfer, my investment company has me fill-out / sign a form declaring Source of Funds.

If the gov’t finds anything suspicious, there’s an airtight paper-trail for all these transactions.

Nothing to see here.

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

#67

Post by gruez »

sharkweek wrote: post #65
simon1ltd wrote: post #51

It might help if anyone paid attention to what a SAR IS: https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/supervision-and-examination... Keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, File reports of cash transactions exceeding $10,000 (daily aggregate amount), and Report suspicious activity that might signal criminal activity (e.g., money laundering, tax evasion) If you do more than $10,000 in cash business/transactions,…

As a former bank teller let me tell you all the brilliant ways people would try to get around this. * Depositing $9,999 cash (yeah, still gonna report that) * Depositing random X,000 cash increments across multiple transactions (yeah, still going to report that) * Making cash deposits across multiple locations in the same day/week (as if the computer didn’t alert us to multiple cash deposits)

So if I want to get around it all I need to do is

* make sure the deposits are under $9000, but also not some amount that's "suspicious" like $8,999

* make sure the deposits happen on a regular interval

* make sure the deposits are at the same branch

I also suspect banks don't share information to generate SAR (eg. a deposit of $15,000 at one bank would generate a SAR, but a deposit of $7,500 at two banks on the same day won't generate a SAR), so if you need to deposit more cash then all you need to do is open more accounts at more banks.

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

#68

Post by starkred »

f-securus wrote: post #56
starkred wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be going after the real perpetrators. If they are, they probably don't want the perpetrators to know how much information they have. If so, their cases may have just been blown apart by these leaks, and the perpetrators are even less likely to get persecuted.

They may, If they are, if so... but extremely doubtful given the history of prosecuting white collar crime in this and other countries. Didn't we have many financial crime leaks this past decade with essentially no repercussions?

It seems to be widely believed that nothing came from the Panama Papers, but I think that's only because people hoped to see some CEOs perp-walked to a waiting cop car. There certainly have been repercussions.

>Twenty-three countries have already recovered at least US$1.2 billion in taxes, heads of government implicated in corruption or tax avoidance have resigned or faced prosecution and there have been investigations in at least 82 countries. Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the story, has shut down and the Panama Papers have prompted high-level political debates and expedited policy reforms around the world

https://www.transparency.org/en/news/three-years-after-the-p...

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

#69

Post by ideals »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #37
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…

Apparently North Dakota is the new hotness for hiding cash and avoiding taxes.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/the-great-amer...

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

#70

Post by safog »

sharkweek wrote: post #65
simon1ltd wrote: post #51

It might help if anyone paid attention to what a SAR IS: https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/supervision-and-examination... Keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, File reports of cash transactions exceeding $10,000 (daily aggregate amount), and Report suspicious activity that might signal criminal activity (e.g., money laundering, tax evasion) If you do more than $10,000 in cash business/transactions,…

As a former bank teller let me tell you all the brilliant ways people would try to get around this. * Depositing $9,999 cash (yeah, still gonna report that) * Depositing random X,000 cash increments across multiple transactions (yeah, still going to report that) * Making cash deposits across multiple locations in the same day/week (as if the computer didn’t alert us to multiple cash deposits)

Curious - how do people who work cash jobs handle this or if your system flags them. I pay our cleaner say $100 in cash. Pretty sure they don't report that to the IRS or pay taxes on it. What happens if they deposit say 2-3k / mo spread across several days? (~30k / yr in total?)
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