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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

#111

Post by ericd »

mabbo wrote: post #82
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?

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 transact…

Thanks for the summary!

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

#112

Post by ericd »

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.

Wiring just feels so anticlimactic in comparison.

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

#113

Post by adrr »

ceejayoz wrote: post #87
adrr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I should clarify, any large transfer to an individual that hasn’t demonstrated access to large amount of capital will generate a SARS. If your not a private client at your bank and you get a $10mm wire will more than likely will generate a SARS and lots of phone calls from the compliance dept at the bank. That like the text book definition of a suspicious transaction. Low balance accounts getting large transfers.

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

#114

Post by Gibbon1 »

Threeve303 wrote: post #95
curiousllama wrote: post #90

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_…

> what's the motivation behind the leak? To let criminals know which banks they can trust?

Motivation is that small fry are going to prison as always but high wealth criminals with political connections are being ignored.

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

#115

Post by lixtra »

vmception wrote: post #110
lixtra wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would appreciate if you could point to some actual data (number of SARs per year in country, false positives...).

I just don't find your cognitive dissonance to be relevant. You’re asking for something to be proved - or supporting evidence that requires a whole dissertation - because your exposure is starting from a position that is fundamentally wrong. “Suspicious” is a misnomer referring to an automatic reporting threshold, that in fewer additional circumstances allows for discretion in filing. The end.

> from a position that is fundamentally wrong

I’m baffled how asking for data is revealing my position?

I had the hope that your position is well founded and it would be easy to point to actual data.

I hardly believe that the compliance laws are not accompanied by studies that collect the data that i asked for. So it should be out there.

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

#116

Post by gruez »

kjs3 wrote: post #98
nelaboras wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why any real criminal activity will have a front. Chinese takeaway, vending machines, flower or newspaper vendor, second hand shop, ..

Those types of businesses get additional scrutiny from the financial fraud team for precisely the reason they're useful as front businesses (as well as tax evasion).

What does this look like? Does the bank ask for receipts if a Chinese restaurant wants to be their customer? Do they stake out the restaurant to see whether the foot traffic levels correspond to the claimed revenues?

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

#117

Post by vmception »

lixtra wrote: post #115
vmception wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't find your cognitive dissonance to be relevant. You’re asking for something to be proved - or supporting evidence that requires a whole dissertation - because your exposure is starting from a position that is fundamentally wrong. “Suspicious” is a misnomer referring to an automatic reporting threshold, that in fewer additional circumstances allows for discretion in filing. The end.

> from a position that is fundamentally wrong I’m baffled how asking for data is revealing my position ? I had the hope that your position is well founded and it would be easy to point to actual data. I hardly believe that the compliance laws are not accompanied by studies that collect the data that i asked for. So it should be out there.

Like I said, I dont find your cognitive dissonance relevant enough to want to do that research for you. If you do research it, I hope the filter bubble Google put you in lets you get access to this version of reality.

Good luck.

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

#118

Post by pas »

gruez wrote: post #116
kjs3 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those types of businesses get additional scrutiny from the financial fraud team for precisely the reason they're useful as front businesses (as well as tax evasion).

What does this look like? Does the bank ask for receipts if a Chinese restaurant wants to be their customer? Do they stake out the restaurant to see whether the foot traffic levels correspond to the claimed revenues?

Some banks do, some don't.

In a lot of countries if you establish a small company and open a bank account for it they will just do the bare minimum, after all if you got a tax number and just got a new company registered you already jumped through a few background check hoops.

Of course they will still run your name through their whatever systems. And eventually if your business starts transacting it'll be constantly looked at by the automated systems.

As long as you don't do anything suspicious, no one will care.

Basically if you behave like all the small shops that have to deposit cash, no one will look twice.

Also, cash is not interesting, the problem is when you start to wire money (or get transfers) to/from places that small kitchens usually don't. And that's when risk and compliance departments might notice the activity.

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

#119

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

lixtra wrote: post #102
vmception wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That a suspicious activity report is not indication of a crime, anything suspicious, and a lot of them get filed many times automatically

I would appreciate if you could point to some actual data (number of SARs per year in country, false positives...).

In 2019 for example, the US had 2.7 million SAR filings. (https://www.fincen.gov/reports/sar-stats, all industry types + year 2019 + all states), compared to a touch above 5,000 white collar federal prosecutions (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-collar-crime-prosecutions...). It's hard to directly calculate a "false positive rate" from those things, because some criminals may generate multiple SARs and others may simply go unprosecuted, but I think such a vast gulf is pretty inconsistent with an idea that most SARs report crimes.

It's certainly conventional wisdom in financial circles that a SAR is worth about as much as a user report on a Reddit comment.

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

#120

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

edoceo wrote: post #42
vmception wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If it's "just spam" couldn't they be evaluated and closed quickly and thus become a non-issue for leakers?

It's very much like a mafia investigation. (In some cases it may well be a mafia investigation!) Most of the individual details you get are unreliable, insufficient, or just don't matter very much - but that doesn't mean there's no harm in leaking a list of them.
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