Global Money Laundering Part I

How dirty money moves across the Global Financial System

The NY Times story shedding light on the mystery of US President Donald Trump’s tax returns has brought the issue of tax evasion and money laundering back into the limelight in recent weeks. According the NY Times, the President has avoided paying Federal income taxes in 10 of the 15 years preceding his election. Perhaps more politically damaging are the revelations that the President has paid as little as $750 (in the 2017 tax year) in years where he has paid income taxes. In comparison, in the same year the President paid taxes of $15,598 in Panama, $145,400 in India and $156,824 in the Philippines.

Despite the outrage in American politics, President Trump is far from alone in being creative with his taxes. Rather, the former businessman turned President is part of wider global trend of tax evasion by much of the global financial and political elite. About the same time that the news of Trump tax returns broke, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the US Treasury saw 2,100 files leaked from its servers. These files — now being dubbed the “FinCEN files” — include information on $2 trillion in transactions dated from 1999 to 2017 that had been flagged by banks as suspicious. The revelations in the FinCEN files are incendiary:

• Several underworld figures are flagged as having received $10 billion in illicit funds laundered out of Russia through shell companies engaged in carefully choreographed stock…