Big banks' crimes uncovered

Here is a news item you may have missed. It appears that some of the biggest banks in the world are criminal enterprises that think they are above the law.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54226107

Leaked documents involving about $2tn of transactions have revealed how some of the world's biggest banks have allowed criminals to move dirty money around the world.

The FinCEN files are more than 2,500 documents, most of which were files that banks sent to the US authorities between 2000 and 2017. They raise concerns about what their clients might be doing.

These documents are some of the international banking system's most closely guarded secrets…

They were leaked to Buzzfeed News and shared with a group that brings together investigative journalists from around the world, which distributed them to 108 news organisations in 88 countries, including the BBC's Panorama programme.

Hundreds of journalists have been sifting through the dense, technical documentation, uncovering some of the activities that banks would prefer the public not to know about….

What has been revealed?

§  HSBC allowed fraudsters to move millions of dollars of stolen money around the world, even after it learned from US investigators the scheme was a scam.

§  JP Morgan allowed a company to move more than $1bn through a London account without knowing who owned it. The bank later discovered the company might be owned by a mobster on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.

§  Evidence that one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest associates used Barclays bank in London to avoid sanctions which were meant to stop him using financial services in the West. Some of the cash was used to buy works of art.

§  The husband of a woman who has donated £1.7m to the UK's governing Conservative Party's was secretly funded by a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Putin.

§  The UK is called a "higher risk jurisdiction" and compared to Cyprus, by the intelligence division of FinCEN. That's because of the number of UK registered companies that appear in the SARs. Over 3,000 UK companies are named in the FinCEN files - more than any other country.

§  Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich once held secret investments in footballers not owned by his club through an offshore company.

§  The United Arab Emirates' central bank failed to act on warnings about a local firm which was helping Iran evade sanctions.

§  Deutsche Bank moved money launderers' dirty money for organised crime, terrorists and drug traffickers. More details (BuzzFeed News)

§  Standard Chartered moved cash for Arab Bank for more than a decade after clients' accounts at the Jordanian bank had been used in funding terrorism.

https://nypost.com/2020/09/23/jpmorgan-set-to-pay-1-billion-fine-for-metals-market-manipulation/

JPMorgan is reportedly set to pay nearly $1 billion to settle a government probe into allegedly illegal fake trades….

News of the inquiries broke in September 2019 when three JPMorgan traders were charged by the DOJ for allegedly running an eight-year conspiracy that involved placing thousands of fraudulent orders on precious metals in order to confuse the market and force rival traders to act accordingly. The tactic, known as “spoofing,” can be effective and was made illegal after the 2008 crisis.

The three bankers, Michael Nowak, who was once head of JPMorgan’s global precious metals, Gregg Smith and Christopher Jordan, are facing a federal RICO charge.

The problem is that none of these criminals will actually go to jail. The CEO, Jamie Dimon, is not even named in the charges, although it happened under his watch for decades. Furthermore, the charges are far more than just “spoofing,” but that is all that is being made public. JP Morgan is “too big to fail,” so this means they can get away with any crime, because the government does not dare shut them down. That’s the power of the big banks.