Carry on Laundering

Special Report, Issue 1531

FOR a decade, Private Eye has been exposing the deluxe laundry service that the United Kingdom has become in the 21st century. Its banks, property market and shell company bazaar, all barely regulated, have made Britain the go-to location for international criminals and kleptocrats with loot to clean.

Now leaked reports of suspicious transactions made by some of the world’s largest banks to the US Treasury’s financial crime unit show that, despite all the warnings and calls for action, the great British washing machine remains on full spin. The price isn’t just the stolen billions; it’s nothing less than a corruption of the world political order.

A drop in the ocean

The 100,000 individual transactions contained in the 2,100 leaked “suspicious activity reports” submitted to the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) up to 2017 – obtained by BuzzFeed News and shared by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) – represent a drop in the ocean of suspect money lapping on to the shores of the world’s economies. The United Nations estimates that money laundering runs to more than 2 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, or a couple of trillion dollars every year.

But this understates the problem’s true significance, which lies in the corruption of economies, governments and societies. As the narrow slice of this activity covered by the FinCEN Files shows, the launderette continues to sustain despotic regimes, organised crime and a worldwide tax-dodging industry. And the UK remains at its heart.

Full special report by Richard Brooks in the magazine, out now!