Stock exchanges in sharp decline, the Fincen files investigation weighs on the lack of controls by banks

2020-09-21T07:59:39.899Z

The Milan stock exchange is down by 1.88%, after -1.49 last week. In Milan, oil and banking stocks are falling above all. Even more marked drops in the rest of Europe, in particular in the Frankfurt stock exchanges (-2.07%) and especially in London, -2.37 percent. Markets come from the third week down on Wall Street. Concerns are weighing on the progress of the infections, but also a journalistic investigation, called FinCen Files, which sees the same International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (Icij) that dealt with the Panama Papers in the field. In this case, the investigation starts from the analysis of 2,657 confidential documents from various international banks, obtained from the Buzzfeed site and sent to the consortium of investigative journalists; the investigation is mainly concerned with money laundering. Among the strands, one concerns the HSBC bank, based in London and historical roots in Hong Kong. The institute would not have stopped in time the transactions of a 2013 Ponzi scam in the United States. The stock of the bank, which reiterated that it followed all the rules, fell by 3.5% in Hong Kong, hitting its lowest level since 1995. Same trend on the London stock exchange. Other banks named in the investigation include Standard Chartered and Germany's Deutsche Bank, both down by more than 3%. All the banks have all declared that they have respected the rules. On the raw materials front, oil drops by more than 1%: Brent from the North Sea is trading at $ 42.69 a barrel.