GREEN LIGHT

Banks Processed Paul Manafort’s Millions Despite Being Warned Transactions Were Suspicious

Files in FinCEN probe show Deutsche Bank appears to have facilitated over half of $2 trillion in suspicious transactions

Paul Manafort, the political strategist who led Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign for months and was later convicted of fraud and tax evasion, managed to shuttle tens of millions of dollars around the world for years despite his transactions being flagged as early as 2012. A global leak of documents known as the FinCEN files reveals that JPMorgan processed more than $50 million in payments over a decade for Manafort. In 2017, according to The Guardian, the bank filed a report on wire transfers of more than $300 million involving shell companies in Cyprus that had done business with Manafort. The files also show that Germany’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank, appears to have facilitated over half of the $2 trillion of suspicious transactions that were flagged to the U.S. government. Between 1999 and 2017, $1.3 trillion of $2 trillion in leaked transactions that were flagged as suspicious passed through Deutsche Bank.