My gut says these leaked reports will have a greater negative impact on current corruption investigations than any positive impact from public consumption.
2000+ reports from between 1999 to 2017 amounting to a total of $2tn. Of those reports they only name-check Manafort, a Russian oligarch, and HSBC. How many people are feeling outrage because of the perceived connection between the current administration and corruption when these reports also cover years from the previous 3 administrations? How many characters connected to powerful Democrats could be found among these 2000 reports?
What if someone at the IRS leaked their flagged accounts as "possible tax fraud" or if Google leaked suspicious traffic logs as "possible cyber terrorism"? How much information could the general public be expected to glean about actual bad actors based on similar reporting? How many people here actually understand what an SAR contains and why it is created? Can anyone cite me what % of SARs turn out to be indicators of actual crimes?
I don't doubt that many of the people in these reports are guilty of crimes, but corruption investigations also take a long time and the more recent reports may very well be relevant to ongoing investigations and having them made public could spook suspects before authorities have gathered enough evidence to bring a charge.
That is all, carry on.
Does that sum it up pretty well? You seem to have a pretty vested interest in this being ignored if judged by the volume of similar comments you've left in this thread.
A suspicious activity report is not about a crime, it isn't about anything being suspected of a crime or even actually suspicious.
SARs are an ill thought compliance nuance created by Congress 50 years ago with a ridiculous name.
The headline even has a vested interested in covering its own ass with the wording "possibly corrupt" because their own legal department was like "really?" and the editor in chief was like "but think of the clicks!"
TFA literally makes no accusations, it is simply stating the facts. Manafort was convicted of money laundering and fraud, and the fact that many of these reports were filed on him makes it seem like the system is working as intended. Similarly, Mogilevich is wanted by the FBI. Maybe that should mean there's a reason for banks to stop doing business with him?
No one here is arguing that banks should be required to stop doing business with anyone who triggers one of these reports. The point is that based on retrospect, they haven't been doing a good job of operating on the information they have, so maybe it's time to actually give such a law teeth.