It is the dirty laundry display of money laundering.
Five of the world's largest banks validated more than $ 2 trillion in suspicious transactions between 1999 and 2017, an investigation by Buzzfeed in partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) found on Sunday. September 20.
It includes the names of notorious criminals, such as Semion Mogilevich, the "Don" of the Russian Mafia, or top-flight financial con artists, such as Jho Low, the Malaysian fugitive and mastermind of the 1MDB planetary fraud, associates to those of leading financial institutions such as JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered, Bank of New York Mellon or even HSBC.
2,100 "suspicious activity reports"
"This case confirms many of the suspicions that one could have on the role of the big banks in money laundering and adds a wealth of shocking details to it", affirms Markus Meinzer, expert of the international networks of tax evasion for the NGO Tax Justice Network, contacted by France 24.
These revelations demonstrate, for example, how the HSBC bank continued to accept to make questionable transfers linked to Russian nationals suspected of corruption, even though it had just been fined in 2012 for having laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in South American drug cartel money.
The investigation also suggests that the bank JP Morgan Chase did not learn from its mistakes, in the early 2000s, with the scammer financier Bernie Madoff, since it does not appear to have subsequently undertaken further research on some. of those shady customers.
She thus validated, between 2010 and 2015, more than a billion dollars of transactions of a small Cypriot structure, ABSI, which served, in reality, to launder part of the loot of the Russian mafia Semion Mogilevich, one of the ten people most wanted by the FBI.
All this information comes from more than 2,100 "Suspicious activity reports" ("SAR") obtained by the Buzzfeed site.
These are alerts launched by internal bank supervisors about accounts or transactions that could be used to launder money.
Financial institutions are then required to submit these documents to FinCEN (Financial Crime Enforcement Network), the US authority to fight white-collar crime.
Hence the name of this new business: the "FinCEN files".
Boots, lingerie and suspicion
Beyond the inventory at the Prévert of the failings of HSBC, Deutsche Bank or JP Morgan in the fight against money laundering, this case reveals above all "the limits of the 'SAR' system", judge Markus Meinzer.
Banks, once the document has been sent to FinCEN, are not obliged to prohibit the transaction.
"They use these suspicious activity reports to wash their hands of the consequences of transactions that they authorize despite everything," regrets this specialist in international tax fraud.
In more than 50% of cases, banks have not blocked these dubious transactions, found Buzzfeed.
However, some of these validated transactions presented all the finery of the obvious money laundering effort.
This is particularly the case of NoviRex, a strange company of small household appliances opened in 2010 in London.
She quickly began paying bills of several hundred thousand dollars to various companies located in tax havens for alleged purchases having very little to do with her core business: $ 200,000 in lingerie, or $ 400,000 for boots for women.
However, JP Morgan accepted NoviRex as a client.
"If I were JP Morgan and were shown the accounts of this company, I would immediately find it horribly suspicious," said Martin Woods, a former British police detective specializing in financial crimes, interviewed by the International Consortium of Financial Crimes. investigative journalists.
NoviRex has in fact turned out to be too shady to be honest: American justice discovered in 2017 that this company was used by the entourage of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to launder money from the corruption.
Uber laundering
These big banks prefer to close their eyes because it pays a lot.
To understand their financial interest in this affair, we must come back to their role in the international financial circuit.
"They are the only ones able to validate international money transfers in dollars, which is vital for those who want to launder money", explains Markus Meinzer.
Initially, when a criminal wants to keep his dirty money safe, he deposits it in a small local bank that is not too careful about the origin of the funds.
But then he wants his jackpot to be really safe in one or more off-shore accounts.
For this, it is necessary to go through a larger bank that has access to the American financial market, through which almost all international capital flows pass.
HSBC, Deutsche Bank and a few others hold this precious sesame, and these banks will therefore charge hefty commissions to validate these transactions in dollars.
They therefore serve as intermediaries, a bit like “money laundering Ubers”.
They are the ones who transport the money to its final destination.
They do not necessarily know that it is dirty, but do not make much effort to be interested in its origin, demonstrated this new scandal.
The money these banks make from these questionable fund movements is well worth the risk of getting caught sometimes by the financial authorities.
Thus, in 2014, when JP Morgan had to settle $ 2.6 billion to settle its role in the Madoff affair, it also recorded nearly $ 22 billion in profits, including a large part in commissions on international transfers. , underlines the ICIJ.
These new revelations "prove once again that financial penalties do not discourage these banks from being passive accomplices in this transnational crime," says Markus Meinzer.
For him, this would be the perfect opportunity to increase the pressure on these large international banks.
"It would be necessary, in addition to suspicious activity reports, that these institutions can be required to communicate to the authorities the precise identity of the customers concerned by these operations", he assures us.
Too often in the 'SARs' consulted Buzzfeed, the bank claims to have been unable to identify the true beneficiary of the transactions.
Such an obligation would, perhaps, push them to carry out more in-depth investigations into the origin of the funds.
This would make it more difficult for them to practice the ostrich policy and say that they did not know.
It would also, according to Markus Meinzer, condemn the bankers to prison terms "to send a clear message".
Because after all, he recalls, the current lightness of banking controls on these illicit flows allows mafia to finance activities that can kill or corrupt politicians to ruin countries.
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