Näytetään tekstit, joissa on tunniste DRUG CARTELS. Näytä kaikki tekstit

torstai 23. lokakuuta 2025

Pelosi Says Police May Arrest Federal Agents Who Violate California Law

In Chicago, gangs like the Latin Kings monitor officers via rooftop spotters with radios. Meanwhile, Antifa factions in Portland and elsewhere allegedly shield cartel-linked migrants from deportation. DHS has identified bounty tiers in this scheme – $2,000 for doxxing, $5,000 to $10,000 for kidnappings and $50,000 for killing senior officials.

___

Pelosi Says Police May Arrest Federal Agents Who Violate California Law

The San Francisco district attorney said in an interview that she came up with the strategy after seeing federal agents repeatedly roughing up people in Los Angeles and Chicago.

The ability of states to arrest federal officers is murky, and without much legal precedent, according to the dean of University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
Credit...Philip Cheung for The New York Times

By Heather Knight and Kellen Browning

Reporting from San Francisco

Oct. 22, 2025

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested on Wednesday that local police could arrest federal agents if they break California law while conducting immigration raids that are expected this week in the San Francisco Bay Area.

With Border Patrol agents due to arrive, Ms. Pelosi issued the stark warning along with Kevin Mullin, a fellow Democratic representative, who represents the small slice of San Francisco that Ms. Pelosi doesn’t. President Trump has said several times in recent weeks that he wanted to send federal forces to the city.

“The issue is, a lot of these ICE agents are harassing American citizens,” he said. “They’re acting in a lawless way.”

“While the President may enjoy absolute immunity courtesy of his rogue Supreme Court, those who operate under his orders do not,” they wrote in a statement on Wednesday. “Our state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law — and if they are convicted, the President cannot pardon them.”

A spokeswoman with the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The idea appears to have come from Brooke Jenkins, the San Francisco district attorney. Ms. Jenkins said in an interview on Wednesday that she came up with the strategy after seeing federal agents repeatedly roughing up people in Los Angeles and Chicago.

If federal agents came to her city and did the same, District Attorney Jenkins decided, she would treat them like anybody else breaking the law and would seek to prosecute them.

Hit people with batons? Beat them up? Not on her watch, she said.
“I had lead time to think about what authority I have and what I can do,” she said. “This is something I felt very strongly about, and I had my office research it.”

District Attorney Jenkins said she had communicated with the San Francisco Police Department about arresting federal agents for “clear, excessive use of force” and that the agency was on board with the concept. A spokesman for the department did not return a request for comment on Wednesday.
District Attorney Jenkins said she did not envision police officers handcuffing federal agents in full view on city streets. Instead, she said, local law enforcement could review camera footage of beatings, if they occur, and try to identify the agent involved. Then, she said, she would ask a judge to sign a warrant for the agent’s arrest and seek to prosecute the agent in court.

“For me, this is about San Francisco and what I need to do for San Francisco,” she said.
That could be much easier said than done. Many federal agents are operating in masks and without badges or other identification; a California law barring agents from wearing masks does not take effect until January and even then is quite likely to face legal challenges. And the Trump administration could seek immunity for its officers or ignore the warrants altogether, Ms. Jenkins acknowledged.
She said she had not discussed her idea with other prosecutors in California or around the country.
District Attorney Jenkins shared the idea on X earlier this month after Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, said that he would support President Trump sending National Guard troops to San Francisco. (Mr. Benioff later recanted and apologized for his statement on the Guard.)

The ability of states to arrest federal officers is murky, and without much legal precedent, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. A state cannot unduly interfere with the ability of a federal agent to enforce federal law, he said, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have the legal right to apprehend individuals suspected of being in the country illegally.

“As long as the ICE agents are acting legally, the state can’t prosecute them and hold them liable, even if it dislikes what they’re doing,” Mr. Chemerinsky said.

But immigration agents who overstep their legal bounds — for instance, by using excessive force — could be sued in California, he said.
“I think the ICE agents can be sued, for battery, for excessive force, in state court, and I think they can be similarly prosecuted,” Mr. Chemerinsky said. “If ICE agents act beyond their legal authority, and violate state law in doing so, they can be prosecuted.”

In their statement, Representatives Pelosi and Mullin made clear that they believed federal immigration agents had overstepped their authority in other situations.
“Reports of a planned mass immigration raid in the Bay Area are an appalling abuse of law enforcement power,” they wrote. “Broad sweeps that target families and terrorize law-abiding residents betray our nation’s values and waste resources that should focus on real threats to public safety.”

Spokespeople for both Democrats declined to further explain how they believed local or state police should arrest federal agents.

Representative Sam Liccardo, a Democrat who previously served as the mayor of San Jose, said he had spoken with colleagues and local law enforcement officials about such an action.
“All law enforcement must comply with the Constitution,” he said, “and to the extent that there’s a violation of federal or state constitutional protections or civil liberties, there’s certainly a basis for asserting a violation.

In other cities where the federal government has escalated immigration enforcement, local authorities have complained that federal agents have bent the law and abused civilians.

Representative Ro Khanna, another Bay Area Democrat, has pushed for a requirement that immigration agents wear body cameras and visibly display their names during operations.
“The issue is, a lot of these ICE agents are harassing American citizens,” he said. “They’re acting in a lawless way.”

Shawn Hubler contributed reporting.
Heather Knight is a reporter in San Francisco, leading The Times’s coverage of the Bay Area and Northern California.
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.

See more on: U.S. Politics, Democratic Party, Homeland Security Department, National Guard, Police Department (San Francisco, Calif), Nancy Pelosi

SOURCE
https://web.archive.org/web/20251023100402/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/us/politics/nancy-pelosi-ice-agent-arrest.html

___

DHS warns against doxxing and threats to ICE agents, vowing to prosecute those who expose or threaten ICE officers and their families – citing a 1,000 percent urge in assaults.

Cases include livestreamed stalking, Nazi-era execution threats and Halloween effigies of hanged agents. Cartels offer bounties ($2,000 for doxxing, $50,000 for assassinations).

Apps like ICEBlock and Red Dot (since removed) enabled real-time tracking, leading to ambushes, including a Dallas facility shooting that killed two detainees.

DHS blames "sanctuary politicians" and outlets like CNN for demonizing ICE, comparing agents to Nazis and emboldening extremists (Antifa, cartel-linked gangs).

Unchecked threats to ICE agents erode public safety and national sovereignty, aligning with globalist agendas to destabilize law enforcement and weaken U.S. borders.

The Deparment of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a stern warning against parties doxxing and threatening Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and their families, threatening to unleash the long arm of the law.

"Like everyone else, our law enforcement officers just want to go home to their families at night," the department said in a post on X Tuesday, Oct. 14. "If you dox, threaten or lay hands on our officers, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law."

Days earlier on Oct. 9, DHS issued a statement appealing to "sanctuary politicians and the media to tone down their rhetoric," noting that assaults against ICE personnel have surged by over 1,000 percent. Agents and their families are facing unprecedented threats – ranging from doxxing and harassment to assassination bounties put forward by Mexican drug cartels – and the statement shared three examples.

In one harrowing case, three women livestreamed their pursuit of an ICE agent to his residence, shouting warnings to neighbors before posting his address on Instagram. In Texas, an agent's wife received a phone call invoking Nazi-era executions as a warning for her husband's work and promising retribution against their children. The statement also referenced Halloween displays in Houston where effigies of agents were hanged in mock gallows.

"These officers … arrest murderers, pedophiles and gang members every day," said DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin. "Comparing ICE day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police and slave patrols has consequences. The violence and dehumanization of these men and women who are simply enforcing the law must stop."

BrightU.AI's Enoch engine warns that "allowing threats against ICE agents to go unchecked emboldens lawless behavior and undermines public safety, signaling that violence against law enforcement will be tolerated. This erosion of authority invites chaos, destabilizes society and ultimately empowers those who seek to dismantle the rule of law – part of the globalist agenda to weaken national sovereignty and enforce their tyrannical control."

ICE agents are under siege, and the mainstream media is fueling the fire

The recent tactics mirror historical efforts to intimidate law enforcement, recalling the violent targeting of police during the 1960s and 70s by extremist groups. But behind the harassment lies a darker coordination. Cartels are reportedly working with domestic extremists to surveil agents, offering cash for intelligence, assaults and assassinations – a scheme Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called "an organized campaign of terror."

Today's threats, however, are amplified by digital tools. Apps like ICEBlock and Red Dot, which once flagged agent locations in real-time, were only removed by Apple and Google after pressure from DHS and the Department of Justice.

Attorney General Pam Bondi condemned the apps as "designed to put ICE agents at risk," while Noem accused platforms of enabling "terrorism by algorithm." The apps' dangers became tragically clear in September, when a gunman allegedly used tracking software to ambush an ICE facility in Dallas, killing two detainees before taking his own life.

The stakes transcend politics. As DHS warns in its public appeals, the attacks aren't just on ICE but on the rule of law itself – a sentiment echoed by border czar Tom Homan. The former acting ICE director during President Donald Trump's first term accused fake news network CNN of "crossing the line" by publicizing ICE-tracking apps. "We live in a world where law enforcement is painted as the villain," he said.

In an era where digital mobs and transnational criminals collaborate to target those enforcing immigration laws, the question isn't just about safety. It's whether America's institutions will defend the defenders, or let them stand alone. For now, DHS vows zero tolerance.

Watch this clip from "Fox and Friends" about the dangers ICE agents and their families face due to doxxing.

https://www.brighteon.com/f1b74c75-9830-4182-b653-27f744ce92b2

This video is from the TrendingNews channel on Brighteon.com.

Sources include:

Exclusive: ICE Agents Arrest Illegal Alien Convicted Pedophiles, Killers, Gang Members Despite Government Shutdown

John Binder | 22 Oct 2025

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are arresting what officials call “the worst of the worst” illegal aliens throughout the United States despite a continuing government shutdown.

“Our brave ICE law enforcement officers are heroes who risk their lives to remove the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from American communities,” the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement:

Yesterday’s arrests included illegal aliens and gang members convicted of heinous crimes including the sexual assault of a child, negligent homicide, assault, and carjacking. Nothing will deter ICE from making America safe again. Not the Democrats’ government shutdown, terrorist attacks against them, or even bounties for their murders. [Emphasis added]

Among the illegal aliens ICE arrested is Angel Gabriel Ramirez-Robles of Mexico, who was previously convicted for sexual assault of a child in Hidalgo County, Texas.

Likewise, ICE arrested Francisco Felipe-Juan of Guatemala, who was previously convicted for criminally negligent homicide, second-degree assault, and third-degree assault in DeKalb County, Alabama, as well as Everado Garcia-Martinez of Mexico, who is a Barrio Van Nuys gang member previously convicted for carjacking and evading a peace officer in Van Nuys, California.

Antonio Cervantes-Barberena of Mexico was arrested by ICE agents after having been convicted of distributing cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana in Iowa.

ICE agents also arrested Nancy Zuleira Aviles-Gomez of Mexico, who has been convicted of escaping custody in Louisville, Kentucky.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.

SOURCE
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/10/22/ice-arrests-illegal-alien-pedophiles-killers-gang-members-despite-govt-shutdown/

___

Friday, October 24, 2025

Nancy Pelosi Wants Local Police to Arrest ICE Agents.

PULSE POINTS

WHAT HAPPENED: Former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) suggested that local law enforcement could arrest federal agents who break local laws while enforcing federal immigration policies.

WHO WAS INVOLVED: Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-CA), San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, and federal agents.

WHEN & WHERE: California, as outlined in a statement on Wednesday.

KEY QUOTE: “Our state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law—and if they are convicted, the President cannot pardon them.” – Nancy Pelosi and Kevin Mullin

IMPACT: Legal experts have noted that the authority for states to arrest federal officers lacks clear precedent and could face significant legal challenges.
CONTINUES:
SOURCE
https://thenationalpulse.com/2025/10/23/nancy-pelosi-wants-local-police-to-arrest-ice-agents/

___
eof

torstai 24. syyskuuta 2020

DIRTY MONEY POURS INTO THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL BANKS

MONEY FROM DRUG CARTELS, ORGANIZED CRIME RINGS, CORRUPT LEADERS.
MONEY THAT FUNDS TERROR NETWORKS, BLOODY WARS, AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING.
ALL LAUNDERED CLEAN.
THE BANKS DON’T STOP THE MONEY AND THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T STOP THE BANKS.

DIRTY MONEY POURS INTO THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL BANKS.

Posted on September 20, 2020, at 1:01 p.m. ET

This is part 1 of our FinCEN Files investigation. To read more, click here.

A huge trove of secret government documents reveals for the first time how the giants of Western banking move trillions of dollars in suspicious transactions, enriching themselves and their shareholders while facilitating the work of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins.

And the US government, despite its vast powers, fails to stop it.

Today, the FinCEN Files — thousands of “suspicious activity reports” and other US government documents — offer an unprecedented view of global financial corruption, the banks enabling it, and the government agencies that watch as it flourishes. BuzzFeed News has shared these reports with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 news organizations in 88 countries.

These documents, compiled by banks, shared with the government, but kept from public view, expose the hollowness of banking safeguards, and the ease with which criminals have exploited them. Profits from deadly drug wars, fortunes embezzled from developing countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to flow into and out of these financial institutions, despite warnings from the banks’ own employees.

Money laundering is a crime that makes other crimes possible. It can accelerate economic inequality, drain public funds, undermine democracy, and destabilize nations — and the banks play a key role. “Some of these people in those crisp white shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the tragedy of people dying all over the world,” said Martin Woods, a former suspicious transactions investigator for Wachovia.

“Some of these people in those crisp white shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the tragedy of people dying all over the world.”

Laws that were meant to stop financial crime have instead allowed it to flourish. So long as a bank files a notice that it may be facilitating criminal activity, it all but immunizes itself and its executives from criminal prosecution. The suspicious activity alert effectively gives them a free pass to keep moving the money and collecting the fees.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, is the agency within the Treasury Department charged with combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes. It collects millions of these suspicious activity reports, known as SARs. It makes them available to US law enforcement agencies and other nations’ financial intelligence operations. It even compiles a report called “Kleptocracy Weekly” that summarizes the dealings of foreign leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

What it does not do is force the banks to shut the money laundering down.

In the rare instances when the US government does crack down on banks, it often relies on sweetheart deals called deferred prosecution agreements, which include fines but no high-level arrests. The Trump administration has made it even harder to hold executives personally accountable, under guidance by former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein that warned government agencies against “piling on.”

But the FinCEN Files investigation shows that even after they were prosecuted or fined for financial misconduct, banks such as JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon continued to move money for suspected criminals.

Suspicious payments flow around the world and into countless industries, from international sports to Hollywood entertainment to luxury real estate to Nobu sushi restaurants. They filter into the companies that make familiar items from people’s lives, from the gas in their car to the granola in their cereal bowl.

The FinCEN Files expose an underlying truth of the modern era: The networks through which dirty money traverse the world have become vital arteries of the global economy. They enable a shadow financial system so wide-ranging and so unchecked that it has become inextricable from the so-called legitimate economy. Banks with household names have helped to make it so.

Alex Fradkin / Redux for BuzzFeed News

BuzzFeed News’ investigation shows that:

Standard Chartered moved money on behalf of Al Zarooni Exchange, a Dubai-based business that was later accused of laundering cash on behalf of the Taliban. During the years that Al Zarooni was a Standard Chartered customer, Taliban militants staged violent attacks that killed civilians and soldiers.

HSBC’s Hong Kong branch allowed WCM777, a Ponzi scheme, to move more than $15 million even as the business was being barred from operating in three states. Authorities say the scam stole at least $80 million from investors, mainly Latino and Asian immigrants, and the company’s owner used the looted funds to buy two golf courses, a 7,000-square-foot mansion, a 39.8-carat diamond, and mining rights in Sierra Leone.

Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, American Express, and others collectively processed millions of dollars in transactions for the family of Viktor Khrapunov, the former mayor of Kazakhstan’s most populous city, even after Interpol issued a Red Notice for his arrest. Khrapunov, who had already fled to Switzerland and who claims the allegations are politically motivated, was later convicted in absentia on charges that included bribe-taking and defrauding the city through the sale of public property.

The banks mentioned in this story said they could not comment on specific transactions due to bank secrecy laws. Their statements can be found here.

By law, banks must file suspicious activity reports when they spot transactions that bear the hallmarks of money laundering or other financial misconduct, such as large, round-number transactions or payments between companies with no discernible business relationship. SARs are not by themselves evidence of a crime, but FinCEN’s director, Kenneth Blanco, has called them “vital for law enforcement investigations.”

Prior to this reporting, very few SARs had ever been revealed. The FinCEN Files encompass more than 2,100.

Information from millions of these documents feeds into a single database, through which law enforcement officers can summon detailed financial information with a few keystrokes. The FinCEN Files opens a rare window into this vast system of financial intelligence, unmatched in the world but all but unknown to the public. The SARs themselves are so closely held that members of the public cannot obtain them through records requests or subpoenas, and banks are not allowed even to confirm their existence.

Prior to this reporting, very few SARs had ever been revealed. The FinCEN Files encompass more than 2,100.

For more than a year, BuzzFeed News and its partner news organizations across the world mined the information on these tens of thousands of pages to map more than 200,000 transactions. (Here’s an explanation of how we did it.) In all, suspicious activity reports in the FinCEN Files flagged more than $2 trillion in transactions between 1999 and 2017. Western banks could have blocked almost any of them, but in most cases they kept the money moving and kept collecting their fees.

Suspicious activity reports are written by the banks’ financial crime watchdogs, or compliance officers, who are often parked in remote offices and left to make sense of a vast number of transactions with very few resources, writing SARs with little research or verification. BuzzFeed News’ research went much further, including reams of internal bank data, thousands of pages of public records, hundreds of interviews with sources across the globe, dozens of Freedom of Information Act filings, five public records lawsuits, and requests for three federal courts to unseal records — all to piece together the intricacies of a financial system that is largely hidden.

A Historic Opportunity

Based in the United Arab Emirates, Mazaka General Trading presented itself to the world as a wholesaler.

But between March 2013 and April 2014, the company received nearly $50 million from five companies involved in a Russian money laundering ring that manipulated international stock trades. In May and June 2014, it received more than $4 million from a Singapore company that appears barely even to exist. It was also sending and receiving money from British firms located at 175 Darkes Lane, one of the world's most notorious addresses for shell companies, which are a common tool to hide ownership.

These transactions by Mazaka General Trading — which the Treasury Department later declared to be a part of the Khanani money laundering network, a group that has financed terrorism and drug cartels around the globe — involved businesses and people far from the shores of the United States. But as the money pinged around from one bank to another, it was all being tracked and it would all be reported to the Treasury Department.

Because the US dollar is the lifeblood of international finance, the common denominator between the world’s disparate currencies, banking customers around the world need access to it. But only select banks are licensed to conduct dollar transactions. So smaller banks in other countries partner with larger institutions, which exchange their customers’ pesos, yuan, or dirham for greenbacks. For a fee, the arrangement, known as correspondent banking, helps keep the global economy humming.

As they pass through US banks, these transfers give the Treasury Department a vantage that no other country has.

It shares some of that information through the Egmont Group, a little-known coalition of financial intelligence units from more than 150 countries and territories. SARs have provided Egmont members with financial details that would be otherwise unattainable, such as those concerning former Olympic Committee member Lamine Diack, who has been sentenced to prison for crimes connected to the Russian doping scandal, and the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was sanctioned by the US two years ago. (Deripaska has sued the US government, maintaining that he is an innocent victim of politics.)

But if the database is a powerful asset to law enforcement investigations, to privacy advocates, it is a nightmare of overreach.

Congress created the current SAR program in 1992 making banks the frontline in the fight against money laundering. But Michael German, a former FBI special agent who is a national security and privacy expert, said that after 9/11, "the SAR program became more about mass surveillance than identifying discrete transactions to disrupt money launderers.”

Today, he said, "the data is used like the data from other mass surveillance programs. Find someone you want to get for whatever reason then sift through the vast troves of data collected to find anything you can hang them with."

In 2017, when US congressional committees began investigating the last presidential election and other matters, they, too, turned to the Treasury Department database.

They requested SARs on Deutsche Bank, which had loaned Trump money; Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who wrote the so-called Trump dossier; an array of Russian oligarchs; Trump’s former campaign chairperson Paul Manafort; and even a small casino in the Pacific run by a former Trump employee. All told, they were looking for information on more than 200 entities.

The world’s biggest banks did business with clients they suspected were corrupt.

FinCEN unearthed tens of thousands of pages of documents. Those documents, along with a few additional SARs requested by federal law enforcement authorities, make up the majority of the FinCEN Files. Some were never turned over to the committees that requested them. A person familiar with the matter blew the whistle to multiple members of Congress.

The collection does not include any SARs about Trump’s finances. (A source familiar with the matter told BuzzFeed News that FinCEN’s database did not contain SARs on either Trump or the Trump Organization.) And though the documents show suspicious payments to people in Trump’s orbit before and after key moments in the 2016 presidential campaign, they do not provide direct information on any election interference.

Because the searches were so broad, however, they revealed something that most in Congress hadn’t even been looking for: evidence that the world’s biggest banks kept doing business with clients that they themselves suspected were facilitating terror and corruption.

The information was laid out in transaction by transaction. And it had been there all along.

Another Chance. And Then Another.

FinCEN received more than 2 million SARs last year. That number has nearly doubled over the past decade, as financial institutions have faced mounting pressure to file and the volume of international transactions has grown. Over the same period, FinCEN’s staff has shrunk by more than 10%. Sources there say most SARs are never even read, let alone acted upon.

Meanwhile, experts say, some banks treat SARs as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, filing alerts about a huge array of transactions without actually moving to halt them. In some cases, banks filed numerous reports on the same clients, detailing their suspected crimes over the course of years while continuing to welcome their business.

By December 2013, JPMorgan Chase had filed at least eight SARs on accounts and companies controlled by Manafort, flagging more than $10 million, according to a FinCEN research report. Manafort, who went on to become Trump’s campaign chair, was convicted of bank and tax fraud in 2018.

Some banks treat SARs as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, filing alerts about a huge array of transactions without actually moving to halt them.

Paul Pelletier, a former senior Justice Department lawyer who once led the agency’s fraud unit, said that approach makes a mockery of the system. “You can't just file SAR after SAR after SAR without eventually violating the money laundering laws,” he said. “You cut them off and drop them as clients. But you don't keep taking their money."

Despite the banks’ sweeping powers to investigate account holders, the FinCEN Files investigation reveals that major financial institutions often fail to perform the most basic checks on their customers, such as verifying where a business is located when someone opens a new account. The lapses allow criminal groups to hide behind shell corporations, registered with no identifying details about their ownership, and slide the proceeds of their crimes into the global financial system.

In many cases, the banks appear to have no idea whatsoever whose money they are moving.

When investigators for HSBC’s American operations asked their colleagues in Hong Kong for the name of the person who owned Trade Leader, a company that had moved more than half a billion dollars through the bank in less than two years, the answer they got was “None available.” The company would reportedly emerge as an important hub in the so-called Russian Laundromat, a sprawling scheme in which wealthy Russians, facilitated by banks, secretly moved their money into the West.

After scandals like the Russian Laundromat, federal prosecutors have made big pronouncements about forcing meaningful change.

Addressing an anti–money laundering conference in 2015, Leslie Caldwell, then the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, said that when it came to getting banks to clean up their acts, deferred prosecution agreements, which typically involve a fine and a probationary period, “can often accomplish as much as, and sometimes even more than, we could from a criminal conviction.”

But the FinCEN Files investigation shows something very different. Banks often get to the end of their agreement without actually fixing the problems. Then, instead of getting the prosecution that they had been threatened with, they just get another chance. And sometimes another.

In 2012, HSBC faced a historic crisis. After permitting narcotraffickers to launder money and conducting business in off-limits countries such as Sudan and Myanmar, the bank was fined $1.9 billion. It promised to change its ways, and to hold it to that promise, the government installed an independent monitor to keep close watch. But the FinCEN Files investigation shows HSBC continued banking, and profiting from, the same kinds of customers that got it in trouble in the first place, such as a Panamanian import-export firm that the Treasury Department later said was laundering money for drug kingpins.

JPMorgan Chase got a deferred prosecution deal of its own. For years, it was the primary bank of the world’s biggest Ponzi schemer, Bernie Madoff. Despite multiple warnings from its own employees, the bank never filed a suspicious activity report on him and allegedly collected $500 million in fees. For punishment, the bank was required to pay a $1.7 billion fine and promise to improve its money laundering defenses. But after it settled the Madoff case, the bank’s own investigators said they suspected it had opened its accounts to an alleged Russian organized crime figure who is known for drug trafficking and contract murders, as well as businesses tied to the repressive North Korean regime, which the US has placed off-limits.

It happened at Standard Chartered, too. Last year, the government amended its 2012 deferred prosecution agreement after the bank was found to have continued clearing transactions for individuals and businesses in off-limits countries, primarily Iran. The bank paid fines totaling $1.1 billion to US and UK authorities, and extended the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement for the sixth time in the space of seven years. The bank apologized for its “violations and control deficiencies” but promised that none had occurred after 2014.

The FinCEN Files documents show Standard Chartered processed hundreds of millions of dollars for companies it suspected were circumventing sanctions against Iran until at least 2017.

Since 2010, at least 18 financial institutions have received deferred prosecution agreements for anti–money laundering or sanctions violations, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News. Of those, at least four went on to break the law again and get fined. Twice, the government responded to this kind of repeat offense by renewing the deferred prosecution agreement — the very tool that failed the first time.

Can It Be Fixed?

If the government wanted to, experts in financial crime say, it could stop the dirty money coursing through the big banks, as well as the vast array of criminal activity it funds.

One step would be to require companies to disclose their owners to the Treasury Department, rather than allowing people to hide behind a shell company. Lawmakers are debating a bipartisan bill that could address that for small companies. The National Federation of Independent Business has opposed it, saying it raises privacy issues and would increase costs. Sen. Sherrod Brown, who cosponsored the bill, told BuzzFeed News, “Congress must act soon because criminals have long been revising, adjusting, and amending their tactics to circumvent our laws.”

Greater public accountability could also make a difference. HSBC has fought to keep secret the final report by the monitor that the government installed to watch over the bank during the years of its deferred prosecution agreement. It even took the unusual step of weighing in on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, when BuzzFeed News sued the Justice Department to release the report. The knowledge that negative reports could become public, and potentially damage share prices, could impel wayward banks to clean up their acts.

“The bankers will never learn until you start putting silver bracelets on people.”

Others say the SARs themselves are part of the problem. German, the former FBI special agent, called the idea behind them "naive" because "the largest money laundering operations occur with the cooperation of the financial institutions, or at least some officers within those institutions. The lack of money laundering enforcement had nothing to do with a lack of evidence of suspicious transactions, but a lack of interest by political and law enforcement leadership.’’

The most powerful way to fix the problem might be the simplest: Arrest the executives whose banks break the law. "The bankers will never learn until you start putting silver bracelets on people," Pelletier said. "Think of the message you're sending to repeat offenders."

"These guys know what they're doing,’’ said Thomas Nollner, a former regulator with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “You break the law, you should go to jail, period."

That approach was once the norm. “Back in the 1980s and 90s and even into the early 2000s, the government went after CEOs all the time,” said US District Judge Jed Rakoff, who has been an outspoken critic of weak penalties for white-collar criminals. In the past, the CEOs of Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco were all sent to jail for what they did, he pointed out. “Now that’s deterrence.”

Rakoff went further: “Under US law, a bank that engages in money laundering can literally be forced out of business by the government, and it is kind of surprising that government hasn’t taken that step, given the obvious deterrent effect it would have.”

Ultimately, the power to keep criminal profits from being laundered through the US financial system may not reside in the actions of a bank’s compliance office or its computer systems or even its executive tier. It may not reside with banking regulators or federal prosecutors or FinCEN. It may not even be a matter of national policy alone. Shutting down wayward banks could have an impact on the whole economy — for the US, its major trade partners, and beyond. When other countries find their banks under US scrutiny, they step in.

In 2012, Standard Chartered and HSBC were facing criminal prosecution. George Osborne, at that time the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, wrote to the chairperson of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to discuss his “concerns” that a heavy-handed response could have “unintended consequences.” He warned of a “contagion.” The implication: Close one bank and the whole economy could suffer.

Prosecutors stood down.

Mazur, the former federal special agent and money laundering expert, says there are a “mosaic” of reasons why US authorities let the money keep running, but one of them may just be that it finds its way into too many pockets.

“Even if it's bad wealth, it buys buildings,” he said. “It puts money into bank accounts. It enriches the nation.” ●

Sophie Comeau, Waylon Cunningham, Sam Feehan, Nancy Guan, Kristy Hutchings, Kylie Storm, Felicia Tapia, Karen Wang, Abby Washer, and Ashley Zhang of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism contributed reporting.

School for Communication and Journalism contributed reporting.

Jason Leopold is a senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.
He is a 2018 Pulitzer finalist for international reporting, recipient of the IRE 2016 FOI award and
a 2016 Newseum Institute National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame inductee.
Contact Jason Leopold at jason.leopold@buzzfeed.com.
Got a confidential tip? Submit it here.
Anthony Cormier is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
While working for the Tampa Bay Times, Cormier won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative
Reporting.
Contact Anthony Cormier at anthony.cormier@buzzfeed.com.
John Templon is a data reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
His secure PGP fingerprint is 2FF6 89D6 9606 812D 5663 C7CE 2DFF BE75 55E5 DF99
Contact John Templon at john.templon@buzzfeed.com.
Tom Warren is an investigations correspondent for BuzzFeed News and is based in London.
Contact Tom Warren at tom.warren@buzzfeed.com.
Jeremy Singer-Vine is the data editor for the BuzzFeed News investigative unit and is based
in New York.
Contact Jeremy Singer-Vine at jeremy.singer-vine@buzzfeed.com.
Scott Pham is a data reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Scott Pham at scott.pham@buzzfeed.com.
Richard Holmes is an investigations reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in London.
Contact Richard Holmes at richard.holmes@buzzfeed.com.
Michael Sallah was an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.
Contact Michael Sallah at michael.sallah@buzzfeed.com.
Tanya Kozyreva was an investigative correspondent for BuzzFeed News based in Kiev, Ukraine.
Contact Tanya Kozyreva at tanya.kozyreva@buzzfeed.com.
Emma Loop was a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.
Contact Emma Loop at emma.loop@buzzfeed.com.
Azeen Ghorayshi is a science editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Azeen Ghorayshi at azeen.ghorayshi@buzzfeed.com.

Play a bigger role in our journalism

BuzzFeed News’ FinCEN Files investigation exposed massive financial corruption on a historic global scale. Want to support our journalism? Become a BuzzFeed News member. Start

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/fincen-files-financial-scandal-criminal-networks

__
eof

torstai 23. lokakuuta 2025