Trillions of Dollars Laundered Through U.S., European Banks after Russian Sanctions
Rotenberg has gone from an obscure businessman in the 1990s to a billionaire during Putin’s 20 years in power. He has made most of his money through contracts with the state or state-owned companies.
The information about the Rotenberg accounts were contained in a trove of 2,100 documents leaked from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to BuzzFeed, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 400 journalists around the world.
News agencies that took part in the investigation began publishing stories tied to the leaked documents on September 20.
The trove of documents indicates that over the period from 1999 to 2017 global banks moved more than $2 trillion in payments they believed were suspicious, raising questions about whether financial institutions and governments are doing enough to stop illicit money flows.
The documents show how major banks, including JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, helped criminal networks around the world move and hide money.
RFERL reports that the latest leak represents at least the fifth major leak over the past six years exposing the depth of global corruption.
In half of the FinCEN reports, the banks didn’t have information about one or more entities behind the transactions, raising concerns about lax enforcement by financial institutions.
The U.S. and other governments have passed legislation in recent years that puts more pressure on banks to clamp down on illicit flows or face hefty fines.
Global banks filed more than 2 million SARS last year. FinCEN, which has 333 employees, is understaffed and underfunded for the fight against corruption, analysts have said.
The news organizations working on the FinCEN documents plan to publish more stories in the coming days about who else was behind suspicious financial flows.
The FinCEN dump is the latest breach of secretive global financial records since the 2017 leak of documents from Appleby and Estera, two offshore legal and corporate service providers.
Known as the Paradise Papers, they revealed the offshore financial dealings of politicians, celebrities, and business leaders.
In a statement released earlier this month FinCEN condemned the disclosure of the leaked documents and said it had referred the matter to the US Department of Justice.
“The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is aware that various media outlets intend to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed suspicious activity reports (SARs), as well as other sensitive government documents, from several years ago,” it stated.
“As FinCEN has stated previously, the unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime that can impact the national security of the United States, compromise law enforcement investigations, and threaten the safety and security of the institutions and individuals who file such reports.”
