The FinCEN Files: Money laundering is a dirty, even deadly business; Miami plays a huge role

[sandensea]

New details about how money that powered the fentanyl drug ring and more than $2 trillion in other suspect funds flowing around the globe are contained in a cache of secret financial records obtained by BuzzFeed News and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

ICIJ - best known for the 2016 Panama Papers - assembled a global team of news organizations to analyze the documents, including, in the United States, the Miami Herald, el Nuevo Herald and their parent, McClatchy.

The records, known as Suspicious Activity Reports, or SARs, provide a worldwide tour of crime, corruption and inequality, with crucial roles played by politicians, oligarchs and swindlers, as well as the bankers who serve them all.

The SARs, which are collected and analyzed by an agency called the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, show how the failure of banks and other financial institutions to thwart the flow of illicit money promotes criminality and suffering on a grand scale.

At: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article245744245.html

[Enterstageleft]

1. I'm anti death penalty

BUT it's time to send a message.

The first time you are convicted of money laundering for ANY reason, it's 20 years in prison. No parole, no pardons, unless overwhelming evidence of misconduct.

2nd time, execute them. They are no longer useful to decent society.

[sandensea]

3. At the very least, seize their laundries

Miami's a good place to start - but the Caymans are a close second.

[2naSalit]

2. This is why we can't have nice things.

[sandensea]

4. True - and yet, it's how Miami went from this:

c. 1980



To this:

[2naSalit]

5. Yup.

I can't see the picture from 1980 but I was there in the 1960s briefly, totally different place. I lived in Key West during the Cuban missile crisis... it was a funky place and the attending islands, where we lived, was a slum, the whole island. Glad we weren't there long.

[sandensea]

6. I can imagine!

I've only been there a few times - mainly on my way to or from somewhere else (don't get me started on that Airport!).

But I couldn't help but be impressed with Brickell Avenue - though my fondest memories of the area were of West Palm Beach, the Breakers, etc.

Still, if I had to live in Florida - but could choose where - I'd take St. Augustine.

One of the truly special places in America, no doubt about it.

[Warpy]

7. Typically, US "news" is ignoring this story

although the BBC has it splashed all over its home page. NBC is the only network to give it a mention and then in regard to N. Korea laundering money through US banks.

Cartel money was discovered flooding into US banks in the mid 00s. The Panama Papers story broke in, what, 2013? 2015?

Regulators have done what they always do, collect the documentation and stick it into a file somwhere while ignoring the criminals behind it. The banks are entirely dependent on that gravy train from dictators, human traffickers, rogue states, and drug cartels, not te mention organized terrorists working with our "allies." Everybody is afraid to rock the boat. They know how easily it can sink.

This story, in combination with the other two I mentioned, should blow the whole rotten thing apart, but it won't. Everybody wants the whole vicious thing to hang together just long enough for them to feel safe.

It won't.