UK Banks Accused of Facilitating Fraudsters and Criminals

Vincent Wood, Indepndent: UK banks have been accused of ‘offering their services to those with money to hide’ after a leaked cache of thousands of documents revealed some of the world’s largest financial firms have facilitated criminals and fraudsters in processing dirty cash. More than 2,000 sensitive banking papers detailing more than $2 trillion’s  worth of transactions were analysed by a consortium of investigative journalists across 108 organisations including the BBC after being leaked to BuzzFeed News. The documents allegedly show banking officials allowed fraudsters to shuttle money between different accounts after being made aware the profits were from multimillion-pound scams or crimes. They are also reported to detail the ways in which Russian oligarchs use banks to dodge international sanctions and move money into the west. Referred to as the FinCEN files — from the US Financial Crimes Investigation Network — the cache is mostly made up of documents banks sent to the US authorities between 2000 and 2017, raising concerns about suspicious activity in their clients’ accounts, according to the BBC’s Panorama programme, which called the documents “some of the international banking system’s most closely guarded secrets”.

Read more: Vincent Wood, Indepndent, https://is.gd/R4N8RQ