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Kind of ridiculous if you ask me... "possibly corrupt"? Is the court of public opinion taking on suspicious financial activity reports now? My gut says these l

Kind of ridiculous if you ask me... "possibly corrupt"? Is the court of public opinion taking on suspicious financial activity reports now? My gut says these leaked reports will have a greater negative impact on current corruption investigations than any positive impact from public consumption.

vmception 6y ago
you're right. this is the weakest leak, specifically aimed to perturb the public consciousness. the legislature called them "Suspicious Activity Reports" and then forget they did it. but they are "Useless Spam Reports". An investigative journalist decided to use the name and the current sentiment against "Banks" and "money" to write these articles.
- defterGoose 6y ago
  "Crimes don't matter" "Democracy doesn't matter" "Nothing matters" "You should just accept it" Does that sum it up pretty well? You seem to have a pretty vested interest in this being ignored if judged by the volume of similar comments you've left in this thread.
  - vmception 6y ago
    I have a general interest in people understanding what this is. A suspicious activity report is not about a crime, it isn't about anything being suspected of a crime or even actually suspicious. SARs are an ill thought compliance nuance created by Congress 50 years ago with a ridiculous name. The headline even has a vested interested in covering its own ass with the wording "possibly corrupt" because their own legal department was like "really?" and the editor in chief was like "but think of the clicks!"
    - defterGoose 6y ago
      So news organizations have an interest in having their stories heard? Film at 11. TFA literally makes no accusations, it is simply stating the facts. Manafort was convicted of money laundering and fraud, and the fact that many of these reports were filed on him makes it seem like the system is working as intended. Similarly, Mogilevich is wanted by the FBI. Maybe that should mean there's a reason for banks to stop doing business with him? No one here is arguing that banks should be required to stop doing business with anyone who triggers one of these reports. The point is that based on retrospect, they haven't been doing a good job of operating on the information they have, so maybe it's time to actually give such a law teeth.
      - vmception 6y ago
        I think the opposite, the law should stop burdening banks and the regulators with these mostly erroneous reports. The SARs didnt necessarily help bust Manafort, the bank already had records of the sender and recipient either way.
CapriciousCptl 6y ago
The biggest story here for me is I look forward to grepping my name and seeing how many of my bank bonus chasing activities/etc have generated SARs. I guess everyone else will get to see that too. For more interesting/famous people than myself it’s a terrible breach of privacy. There could be lots of interesting stuff in this leak but like you, I very much doubt it will expose much corrupt activity.
- curiousllama 6y ago
  I can tell you for certain: if credit card churning generates SARs, then the hit rate on those has to be <1%. There's a lot of consultants out there...
- otoburb 6y ago
  Except we can't grep for our or other people's names because the FinCEN leak isn't necessarily available publicly. It was only (rightly) given to the ICIJ -- even though it was a global team of over 40 journalists trawling through the data trove.
gooseus 6y ago
I'll followup now that I'm out of bed and see that my comment seems controversial and counter to the thread. 2000+ reports from between 1999 to 2017 amounting to a total of $2tn. Of those reports they only name-check Manafort, a Russian oligarch, and HSBC. How many people are feeling outrage because of the perceived connection between the current administration and corruption when these reports also cover years from the previous 3 administrations? How many characters connected to powerful Democrats could be found among these 2000 reports? What if someone at the IRS leaked their flagged accounts as "possible tax fraud" or if Google leaked suspicious traffic logs as "possible cyber terrorism"? How much information could the general public be expected to glean about actual bad actors based on similar reporting? How many people here actually understand what an SAR contains and why it is created? Can anyone cite me what % of SARs turn out to be indicators of actual crimes? I don't doubt that many of the people in these reports are guilty of crimes, but corruption investigations also take a long time and the more recent reports may very well be relevant to ongoing investigations and having them made public could spook suspects before authorities have gathered enough evidence to bring a charge. That is all, carry on.

vmception 6y ago

you're right. this is the weakest leak, specifically aimed to perturb the public consciousness. the legislature called them "Suspicious Activity Reports" and then forget they did it. but they are "Useless Spam Reports". An investigative journalist decided to use the name and the current sentiment against "Banks" and "money" to write these articles.

defterGoose 6y ago
"Crimes don't matter" "Democracy doesn't matter" "Nothing matters" "You should just accept it" Does that sum it up pretty well? You seem to have a pretty vested interest in this being ignored if judged by the volume of similar comments you've left in this thread.
- vmception 6y ago
  I have a general interest in people understanding what this is. A suspicious activity report is not about a crime, it isn't about anything being suspected of a crime or even actually suspicious. SARs are an ill thought compliance nuance created by Congress 50 years ago with a ridiculous name. The headline even has a vested interested in covering its own ass with the wording "possibly corrupt" because their own legal department was like "really?" and the editor in chief was like "but think of the clicks!"
  - defterGoose 6y ago
    So news organizations have an interest in having their stories heard? Film at 11. TFA literally makes no accusations, it is simply stating the facts. Manafort was convicted of money laundering and fraud, and the fact that many of these reports were filed on him makes it seem like the system is working as intended. Similarly, Mogilevich is wanted by the FBI. Maybe that should mean there's a reason for banks to stop doing business with him? No one here is arguing that banks should be required to stop doing business with anyone who triggers one of these reports. The point is that based on retrospect, they haven't been doing a good job of operating on the information they have, so maybe it's time to actually give such a law teeth.
    - vmception 6y ago
      I think the opposite, the law should stop burdening banks and the regulators with these mostly erroneous reports. The SARs didnt necessarily help bust Manafort, the bank already had records of the sender and recipient either way.

CapriciousCptl 6y ago

The biggest story here for me is I look forward to grepping my name and seeing how many of my bank bonus chasing activities/etc have generated SARs. I guess everyone else will get to see that too. For more interesting/famous people than myself it’s a terrible breach of privacy. There could be lots of interesting stuff in this leak but like you, I very much doubt it will expose much corrupt activity.

curiousllama 6y ago
I can tell you for certain: if credit card churning generates SARs, then the hit rate on those has to be <1%. There's a lot of consultants out there...
otoburb 6y ago
Except we can't grep for our or other people's names because the FinCEN leak isn't necessarily available publicly. It was only (rightly) given to the ICIJ -- even though it was a global team of over 40 journalists trawling through the data trove.

gooseus 6y ago

I'll followup now that I'm out of bed and see that my comment seems controversial and counter to the thread. 2000+ reports from between 1999 to 2017 amounting to a total of $2tn. Of those reports they only name-check Manafort, a Russian oligarch, and HSBC. How many people are feeling outrage because of the perceived connection between the current administration and corruption when these reports also cover years from the previous 3 administrations? How many characters connected to powerful Democrats could be found among these 2000 reports? What if someone at the IRS leaked their flagged accounts as "possible tax fraud" or if Google leaked suspicious traffic logs as "possible cyber terrorism"? How much information could the general public be expected to glean about actual bad actors based on similar reporting? How many people here actually understand what an SAR contains and why it is created? Can anyone cite me what % of SARs turn out to be indicators of actual crimes? I don't doubt that many of the people in these reports are guilty of crimes, but corruption investigations also take a long time and the more recent reports may very well be relevant to ongoing investigations and having them made public could spook suspects before authorities have gathered enough evidence to bring a charge. That is all, carry on.