How Big Banks Are Helping Criminals Launder Money

FEATURING SPENCER WOODMAN – A massive trove of leaked documents from the U.S. government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) shows that big banks filed so-called “suspicious activities reports” on trillions of dollars worth of transactions linked to corrupt regimes, mobsters, and international criminals, relying on the U.S. government to not enforce regulations. As a result the banks engaged in what can only be characterized as massive money laundering schemes that have now been laid bare. Among the high profile clients of these big banks is President Donald Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort. The so-called FinCEN files have laid bare the failure of the U.S. government to counter the money laundering schemes—failure so staggering as to amount to complicity. The “Suspicious Activities Reports” or SARs were first leaked to Buzzfeed News which then shared them with the International Consortium of Journalists whose staff worked for months to analyze and make sense of them.

Spencer Woodman, reporter with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

** This segment was originally broadcast on September 21, 2020.