Cost of banks behaving badly
The links between corrupt politicians, certain business leaders and greedy financiers have been known to exist for a long time. What was not so clear was the extent of the corrupt practices that characterised this perverse alliance.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which counts Times of Malta among its members, has started to publish a series of articles based on a leak of over 2,000 suspicious activity reports relating to €2 trillion worth of transactions flagged by international banks. The leak consisted of thousands of secret documents, called FinCEN, held by the US government.
These banking transactions oiled the flow of dirty money around the world on behalf of corrupt politicians and their business cronies. What is shocking is that after these major banks flagged these suspicious transactions, they then did very little to root out the criminals that engaged in money laundering and terrorist financing.
It is so easy to pin all the blame of this criminal behaviour on corrupt politicians. Banking giants HSBC, Barclays Bank, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered and Bank of New York Mellon allegedly focussed on boosting their profits rather than...