The data in the FinCEN Files transactions map contains information on more than $35 billion in transactions dated from 2000-2017 that were flagged by financial institutions as suspicious to United States authorities. The map only displays cases where sufficient details about both the originator and beneficiary banks were available, and is designed to illustrate how potentially dirty money flows from country to country around the world, via U.S.-based banks. The data in this map represents a fraction of the more than $2 trillion worth of transactions found in the FinCEN Files.
This map also provides information about the U.S.-based “correspondent” banks that allow financial institutions in more than 150 countries and territories to process payments in U.S. dollars.
The FinCEN Files is a cache of financial intelligence reports that reveals the role of global banks in industrial-scale money laundering – and the bloodshed and suffering that flow in its wake.
The records include more than 2,100 suspicious activity reports filed by nearly 90 financial institutions to the United States’ Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN. The documents were shared by BuzzFeed News with ICIJ and 108 media partners in 88 countries and include information on more than $2 trillion in transactions dated from 1999-2017 that had been flagged by the banks as suspicious.
The reports reflect the private concerns of global bank money-laundering compliance officers. The SARs include a narrative along with attached spreadsheets of sometimes hundreds of lines of raw transaction data.
Each report provides a summary of the total amount in suspicious transactions and the time range in which they occurred, but didn’t always come with comprehensive details about each transaction.
To extract as much information as possible from the narratives of the suspicious activity reports in FinCEN Files, ICIJ, BuzzFeed News and media partners collaborated to manually collate data on transactions and correspondent connections from each report. The team working on this data extraction involved more than 85 journalists in 30 countries, who collectively were able to record details on more than 200,000 transactions and more than 6,900 correspondent connections.
The data in this map only includes cases where sufficient details about both the originator and beneficiary banks were available in the FinCEN Files, amounting to more than $35 billion in transactions dated from 2000-2017.
The map also includes information extracted from the FinCEN Files data on correspondent services provided by U.S.-based banks that facilitated transactions with financial institutions in more than 150 countries.
ICIJ is not publishing the totality of the leak, and will not divulge raw documents or personal information en masse.
ICIJ is publishing this portion of the data in the public interest. While the transactions do not necessarily establish any criminal misconduct or other wrongdoing, the data offers an unprecedented overview of how money – flagged as suspicious, and in some cases linked to corruption, fraud, sanctions evasion or other crimes – flows around the globe via networks of correspondent banks.
An ICIJ analysis found that suspicion of money laundering operations was the most common reason given for filing a report in the FinCEN Files.
Read more about why ICIJ is making this information public.
Contact us if you have any information that you think might be of interest to ICIJ. You can send us an email to contact@icij.org for tips and general questions or contact data@icij.org for data related questions. More ways to contact ICIJ.
Credits
Designer/Developer: Antonio Cucho Gamboa
Data reporters and researchers: Agustin Armendariz, Jelena Cosic, Miguel Fiandor, Karrie Kehoe, Delphine Reuter, Mago Torres, Margot Williams
Data and research editor: Emilia Díaz-Struck
Online editor: Hamish Boland-Rudder
Community engagement editor: Amy Wilson-Chapman
Chief technology officer: Pierre Romera
Global data collaboration contributors: Kenzi Abou-Sabe, Krishna Acharya, Rickard Andersson, Roman Anin, Agustin Armendariz, Peter Babutzky, Jeremie Baruch, Helena Bengtsson, Paolo Biondani, Jacob Borg, Lars Bové, Simon Bowers, Andrea Cardenas, Claire Caruana, Miriam Castillo, Daniela Castro, Sasha Chavkin, Mario Christodoulou, Kristof Clerix, Anthony Cormier, Jelena Cosic, Xavier Counasse, Gaby De Groot, Emilia Díaz-Struck, Lara Dihmis, Irina Dolinina, Philipp Eckstein, Marcus Engert, Jesus Escudero, Miguel Fiandor Gutierrez, Kaspar Fink, Mariel Fitz Patrick, Will Fitzgibbon, Azeen Ghorayshi, Kyra Gurney, Günter Hack, John Hansen, Richard Holmes, Karol Ilagan, Maia Jastreblansky, Karlijn Kuijpers, Ville Juutilainen, Karrie Kehoe, Jiyoon Kim, Minna Knus-Galán, Anouk Kootstra, Bernt Koschuh, Ulla Kramar-Schmid, Tomohiro Kubota, Andrew Lehren, Boyoung Lim, Lee Long Hui, Norihisa Makino, Alesya Marohovskaya, Stefan Melichar, Carmen Molina Acosta, Gretchen Morgenson, Michael Nikbakhsh, Toshihiro Okuyama, Marco Oved, Andras Petho, Scott Pham, Petra Pichler, Kit Ramgopal, Aidila Razak, Delphine Reuter, Michael Sallah, Yasuomi Sawa, Nina Selbo Torset, Karina Shedrofsky, Roman Shleynov, Olesya Shmagun, Emily Siegel, Jeremy Singer-Vine, Fredrik Stalnacke, Jan Strozyk, John Templon, Rory Tinman, Mago Torres, Yukiko Toyoda, Maxime Vaudano, Mika Velikovskiy, Tom Warren, Margot Williams, Amy Wilson-Chapman, Spencer Woodman, Shyamlal Yadav, Blanka Zoldi
