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

121–126 of 126 posts

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

#121

Post by vmception »

defterGoose wrote: post #79
vmception wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So news organizations have an interest in having their stories heard? Film at 11. TFA literally makes no accusations, it is simply stating the facts. Manafort was convicted of money laundering and fraud, and the fact that many of these reports were filed on him makes it seem like the system is working as intended. Similarly, Mogilevich is wanted by the FBI. Maybe that should mean there's a reason for banks to stop do…

I think the opposite, the law should stop burdening banks and the regulators with these mostly erroneous reports. The SARs didnt necessarily help bust Manafort, the bank already had records of the sender and recipient either way.

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

#122

Post by otoburb »

CapriciousCptl wrote: post #54
gooseus wrote: post #13

Kind of ridiculous if you ask me... "possibly corrupt"? Is the court of public opinion taking on suspicious financial activity reports now? My gut says these leaked reports will have a greater negative impact on current corruption investigations than any positive impact from public consumption.

The biggest story here for me is I look forward to grepping my name and seeing how many of my bank bonus chasing activities/etc have generated SARs. I guess everyone else will get to see that too. For more interesting/famous people than myself it’s a terrible breach of privacy. There could be lots of interesting stuff in this leak but like you, I very much doubt it will expose much corrupt activity.

Except we can't grep for our or other people's names because the FinCEN leak isn't necessarily available publicly. It was only (rightly) given to the ICIJ -- even though it was a global team of over 40 journalists trawling through the data trove.

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

#123

Post by sailfast »

Dahoon wrote: post #78
sailfast wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yeah. The leaker signed an NDA. You of course take the risk that you will be punished by the NDA’s consequences that you sign unless you are using whistleblower statutes. That’s the whole point of the NDA. Edit: you don’t publish your company’s proprietary source code and then expect you just walk away right? You’d be sued into oblivion. It’s important that people abide by their agreements. Whistleblower statut…

This is just BS. Hiding a crime behind an NDA doesn't mean it should be illegal to tell about that crime.

That’s why I mentioned the whistleblower statutes. SARs are not crimes. They are potentially suspicious activity. If there is a crime not being reported after collection of these SARs then blow the whistle. No reason to leak a bunch of them unless you believe the collection of such data to be illegal in the first place (it’s not).

For what it’s worth, the problem is that most folks don’t know what SARs are, when they’re filed, etc. This is basically the equivalent of leaking a bunch of private banking records that banks have to provide to the government, not “leaking hidden crimes that nobody stopped”

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

#124

Post by shrubble »

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.

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

Quoted from above page on SAR reports:

Under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), financial institutions are required to assist U.S. government agencies in detecting and preventing money laundering, such as:

-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).

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

#125

Post by kjs3 »

starkred wrote: post #108
kjs3 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah...there's not a COBOL program running someplace saying IF DEPOSIT IS EQUAL TO 9999.00 THEN FLAG-IT. There's some pretty sophisticated machine learning work being done here, and all the major banks these days have a data science team working the problem.

Sadly there probably is such a COBOL program but it's only going to be the first in line of a lot of systems looking for fraud.

Why is that sad? Since there are a vast collection of morons who see "transactions over 10k will get flagged" and 'cleverly' say "ah-ha! I shall beat the system with 9999.00!", why wouldn't you want to spot that early and easy?

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

#126

Post by kjs3 »

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?

No, it compares this Chinese restaurant to the hundreds or thousands of other similar businesses who bank with it, in similar markets.

No, the bank doesn't ask for receipts or stake out businesses.

If that business has a transaction profile that's out of line with the 'similar business' model, they potentially get flagged.

Post reply on HN