The documents have been leaked to the site Buzzfeed News in the USA, which has given them to the international journalist network ICIJ, where SVT is included.

These are so-called suspicion or money laundering reports that banks submit to the US Financial Police Fincen on suspected criminal transactions.

The American bank leak provides a unique insight into how drug dealers and fraudsters lock their profits beyond the long arm of the law, how looting politicians and oligarchs shovel money around the world that they have looted at the expense of ordinary people's welfare.

"They see the consequences daily"

"People may not know much about money laundering and companies in tax havens, but they see the consequences on a daily basis because this is what makes large-scale crime worthwhile - from drug and arms smuggling to shod covid-19-related unemployment benefits," says Jodi Vittori, US corruption expert.

The journalists' network has identified a number of people who have suffered badly due to money laundering, which may otherwise seem abstract.

One of them was 31-year-old father of four Joe Williams in North Carolina, who died in 2014 of an overdose of the very deadly opioid fentanyl.

Revenues from that particular drug batch were laundered through the banking system to the supplier in China.

The Ukrainian Nadezhda Kulinich, in turn, died when a collapsed tower at a coal mine collapsed in 2011. The state-owned mine had fallen into disrepair and been looted by those in power who looted hundreds of millions of kronor abroad.

Dozens of politicians in the document

The leak includes thieves who sold stolen Buddhist art treasures to galleries in New York.

The art market is relatively unregulated and therefore easy to use to launder money.

Another example is a Venezuelan real estate magnate who shot himself in poor housing.

The documents include dozens of politicians, their relatives and aides, such as Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort, convicted of economic crimes.

There are strange payments here, such as SEK 14 million for "confectionery" from the Ministry of Trade in the severely corrupt Turkmenistan.

The sum went to a Scottish mailbox company with a hidden owner and bank account in Latvia.

In total, flows of SEK 17,000 billion can be seen in the leak.

Despite the inconceivable sum, the documents make up only 0.02 percent of the 12 million reports that Fincen received in 2011–2017.

Footnote: Here you can see graphics of the revelation (External page in English)