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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

#81

Post by adrr »

JauntTrooper wrote: post #50
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…

I work at a bank, and we get training on this regularly. One of the main reasons FinCEN requires strict confidentiality on SARs is to not tip off the account owners that they're being watched/investigated. Investigators will often monitor the accounts to gather enough evidence to prosecute them or to gain intel into broader criminal networks. Regulators also rightfully don't want money launderers to know the playbook…

SARS get generated all the time. Any large movement of cash will generate a SARs. That multi million dollar wire from an escrow account after your startup had liquidity event generated a SARs. What do you think the false positive rate of a SARS report it? 99%? 1 out of 100 SARS reports are actual criminal activity.

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

#82

Post by mabbo »

ericd wrote: post #64
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?

No, not a SAR. A Large Transaction Report. A SAR is if it's suspicious.

If you ever move $10,000 into our out of your bank account, a report is filed with your country's FinInt agency. Every time. It has whatever ID numbers you gave when you opened the bank account, everything else they know about you, and where the money moved from and to.

In Canada (and maybe the US as well?), this also includes large cash transactions with currency converters, casinos, and jewelry stores- because people kept finding new tricks for moving around money.

Edit: And this is why leaking these things is super serious! There's a lot of personal information in them!

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

#83

Post by mabbo »

ceejayoz wrote: post #76
ericd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you did it with a suitcase full of cash , probably.

No, this is applicable to all transactions the bank knows about.

If money enters or leaves a bank account in a quantity greater than $10k within 24 hours, a report is filed with every detail they know about you and about the transactions.

This has been law for more than 20 years. And it's made money laundering really, really hard.

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

#84

Post by justicezyx »

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…

> that can impact the national security of the United States

National security...

Seems China practiced this excuse so well that US decides to copy that...

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

#85

Post by ceejayoz »

luckylion wrote: post #77
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…

If "more than 2000" SARs are totaling $2tn, I don't think there's a lot of "Grandma Jones got a new bed and finally decided to trust the bank with her $11k secret savings". > It's up to the US FINCEN to decide if a crime took place and to handle it accordingly. You decide if you trust them or not, but that is their role in this. Who watches the watchmen?

> Who watches the watchmen?

The US Attorney, who'd receive the information and decide whether or not to prosecute, and the juries/courts involved in that prosecution. Plus, the typical regulatory loop of Congress, courts, etc. involved in the all of the Department of the Treasury's doings.

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

#86

Post by mabbo »

luckylion wrote: post #77
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…

If "more than 2000" SARs are totaling $2tn, I don't think there's a lot of "Grandma Jones got a new bed and finally decided to trust the bank with her $11k secret savings". > It's up to the US FINCEN to decide if a crime took place and to handle it accordingly. You decide if you trust them or not, but that is their role in this. Who watches the watchmen?

The same can be said for the CIA, FBI, Justice Department, etc. If you have a good suggestion for how one can trust their government to have secrets, but also not do bad things, please share it.

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

#87

Post by ceejayoz »

adrr wrote: post #81
JauntTrooper wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a bank, and we get training on this regularly. One of the main reasons FinCEN requires strict confidentiality on SARs is to not tip off the account owners that they're being watched/investigated. Investigators will often monitor the accounts to gather enough evidence to prosecute them or to gain intel into broader criminal networks. Regulators also rightfully don't want money launderers to know the playbook…

SARS get generated all the time. Any large movement of cash will generate a SARs. That multi million dollar wire from an escrow account after your startup had liquidity event generated a SARs. What do you think the false positive rate of a SARS report it? 99%? 1 out of 100 SARS reports are actual criminal activity.

> Any large movement of cash will generate a SARs.

No. It will generate a CTR. It may generate a SAR.

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

#88

Post by ceejayoz »

mabbo wrote: post #83
ceejayoz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you did it with a suitcase full of cash , probably.

No, this is applicable to all transactions the bank knows about. If money enters or leaves a bank account in a quantity greater than $10k within 24 hours, a report is filed with every detail they know about you and about the transactions. This has been law for more than 20 years. And it's made money laundering really, really hard.

You're mixing up different kinds of reports.

CTRs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_transaction_report) are not SARs.

You can have a large transaction that isn't deemed suspicious by your bank. You can have a tiny transaction that is deemed suspicious by your bank, too. CTR = "big transaction". SAR = "suspicious transaction". Often related; not identical.

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

#89

Post by conanbatt »

The financial activity is not generally corrupt, it is the act by the which the money is obtained that is corrupt.

The immense pressure of money laundering comes with a lot of consequences to the cost of transactions, the utilization of commercial banks as part of monetary policy, etc. This is one of the core reasons why bitcoin exists, to precisely avoid these kind of banking issues.

Moreover its over-sensationalized with the conflation between money and wealth. All the dollars stashed away in a cayman islands account is doing no harm to anyone: its depreciating as it is as a holding. Money has no effect unless its spent. And whatever is spent is just as good as regular consumption. It's not even in the interest of government to get the money back: if a few trillion dollars were suddently released into circulation you would have inflation and would not be able to print money that gov is already spending.

Following the money to fight crime has been a ruse.

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

#90

Post by curiousllama »

The $2T focuses on "high-risk individuals from around the world, in some cases even after they had been placed under sanctions by the US government."

So this isn't new "they're not taking this seriously" allegations; it's a methods leak. As a aggressively-pro-transparency advocate, this seems like... a reasonable thing to keep secret, no?

Am I missing something? JP Morgan did the right thing; HSBC was _already known_ to be failing to stop fraudulent transfers; and there's no allegations of impropriety on the part of the government.

Seriously: what's the motivation behind the leak?

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