Data leak is supposed to reveal weaknesses in the fight against money laundering

When it comes to combating money laundering, there are glaring weaknesses among banks and authorities.

According to a report by an international research network, this emerges from documents from the US Treasury Department that stem from a data leak.

There are more than 2,100 money laundering reports from 2000 to 2017, the transfers in question total hundreds of billions of dollars.

According to this, banks from all over the world circumvent money laundering regulations, have dealt with high-risk customers for years: Mafiosi, fraudsters with millions, sanctioned oligarchs.

The banks are said to have accepted them as customers despite strict regulations and carried out transfers in the billions for them.

In some cases, the financial institutions are said to have reported this delayed for years, although they are obliged to report quickly.

The US online medium Buzzfeed News has shared the documents with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

110 media from 88 countries were involved in the research - in Germany NDR, WDR, "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and Buzzfeed News.

According to the reports, drug cartels and corrupt politicians apparently found it easy to gain access to the international financial market, supported by banks such as Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and HSBC.

The Tax Justice Network, which has been showing abuses in the fight against international money laundering for years, was not very surprised at the reports.

The data leak, however, gives "a shocking insight into the central role of the US financial system as the engine room for global money laundering," said Markus Meinzer from the network.

But there are still a lot of problems in Germany.

Allegations against Deutsche Bank

According to the reports, financial institutions are said to have done business with dubious customers after they had already admitted inadequate preventive measures in the USA or had been sanctioned for money laundering violations.

It appears that banks often failed to comply with their own anti-money laundering standards.

There are concrete allegations against Deutsche Bank: According to US investigators, Russian criminals and a money launderer working for terrorist groups have laundered money, among other things, through the Moscow branch of Deutsche Bank.

A company attributed to Igor Putin - a cousin of Russian President Vladimir Putin - is also said to have been involved in illicit cash flows.

Deutsche Bank stated: "These were criminal acts by individuals using a model to enable capital to escape from Russia."

The bank had extensively investigated these "criminal acts", reported them to the supervisory authorities and drawn the consequences right up to the board level.

External auditors are said to have attested "serious deficiencies"

According to the reports, the current Deutsche Bank boss Christian Sewing, as head of corporate auditing at the time, is also responsible for ensuring that it was not noticed earlier how money launderers were apparently able to use the bank for stock transactions.

Sewing's former department spent several months investigating the operations of the stock trading department in Russia in 2014 and had nothing serious to complain about.

Later, however, experts commissioned by the Deutsche Bank themselves are said to have attested "serious deficiencies" to the inspection of Sewing's department.

Deutsche Bank denies direct or indirect involvement of the current CEO in the examination of the Moscow business.

Sewing only submitted the overall plan for several hundred tests in 2014.

He had neither seen nor signed the relevant audit at the time and was therefore not responsible for it.

According to the reports, all the banks asked said that the fight against money laundering is being taken very seriously, that internal measures have been greatly expanded in recent years, that they are cooperating with the authorities and that they are adhering to the applicable regulations.

The media involved state, however, that criminals seem to know the weak points of the anti-money laundering system well and use them.

Icon: The mirror

ulz / dpa