© Robert Miller/The Washington Post via Getty Images The U.S. Treasury Department building is seen in Washington, D.C. A senior Treasury Department employee was charged with leaking confidential bank records pertaining to suspicious transactions involving Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, the Russian Embassy and Maria Butina, who’s been accused of being a Russian agent.

Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, which targets illicit use of the U.S. financial system, was accused of leaking Suspicious Activity Reports to a journalist starting in 2017 and continuing until this week. The reporter and the news organization aren’t identified, but the articles cited by prosecutors were written by journalists at BuzzFeed — the most recent having been published Oct. 15.

BuzzFeed declined to comment on the arrest. Edwards’s lawyer, Peter D. Greenspun, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The case marks another effort by U.S. officials to crackdown on leaks to the media of non-public information. A senior Treasury Department official, not authorized to speak with the news media, said the investigation was intended to signal the department’s intent to punish violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, and that incidents involving unauthorized disclosure of protected information wouldn’t be left unresolved.

Others may also be in legal peril. Prosecutors said Edwards’s boss, who isn’t named, also communicated with the reporter and they identify the person as a co-conspirator. The government also hinted at how they might pursue a case against the reporter. In a brief snippet of the 18-page complaint, prosecutors say Edwards looked for records “at Reporter-1’s request” and they quote the journalist suggesting names she could search. That could make the reporter complicit in the crime.

President Donald Trump has railed against leakers in his administration in postings on Twitter.

The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2018

Edwards’s prosecution echoes, most recently, that of Reality Winner, an employee of a military contractor, who took classified information about Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and sent it to The Intercept, an investigative digital publication.

Edwards is scheduled to appear Wednesday in court in Alexandria, Virginia.

Under the Bank Secrecy Act, financial institutions are required to report suspicious transactions to the Treasury, such as payments of more than $10,000, or those that are made to people and entities who are blacklisted by the Treasury Department. The filings are confidential, and unauthorized disclosures are a criminal offense.

Edwards began communicating with the unidentified reporter in July 2017, according to prosecutors. Between October 2017 and January 2018, she saved thousands of FinCEN files, including all the SARs cited in the case. The news organization published 12 articles based on the disclosures, prosecutors say.

When she was arrested Tuesday, Edwards had a flash drive on which she apparently saved the SARs, as well as a phone containing communications over an encrypted application in which she transmitted the reports to the reporter, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in New York said in a statement.

Edwards confessed to leaking the SARs to the reporter when questioned by investigators, although she “falsely denied” knowing that the material was going to be published, according to the complaint. She allegedly told agents she was a “whistle-blower” who provided the SARs to the reporter for “record keeping.” Prosecutors said she had previously filed a whistle-blower complaint in a separate matter.

The transaction reports that were leaked to the news organization pertained to payments involving Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman, Gates, Manafort’s business partner, as well as transactions involving a Russian company called Prevezon that was tied to laundered funds used to purchase New York real estate. Manafort was convicted in August of tax fraud and bank fraud. Gates pleaded guilty and testified against him.

The SARs listed in the charges Wednesday aren’t the only ones that appear to have made their way into the public sphere.

In May, Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for Stephanie Clifford, released a summary of information about bank transfers involving Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. The records showed hundreds of thousands of dollars moving from companies including ATT, Novartis and a firm tied to a wealthy Russian, to a shell company that Cohen had set up to handle payments to Clifford.

With assistance from Caleb Melby and Tom Schoenberg.