💣NEW from our #FinCENFiles: Remember when HSBC paid a $1.9B fine for violating sanctions & allowing drug kingpins to launder $$$ through the bank & then promised to clean up it's act?
This was a massive, yearlong investigation into HSBC. We found that after the bank entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with DOJ & while it was under the watch of an independent monitor, HSBC continued to facilitate & profit from transactions it suspected were dirty
Our #FinCENFiles shows that Vida Panamá, owned by Panama’s powerful Waked family, used HSBC to exchange $292M in suspicious transactions before Treasury declared it a money laundering organization that washed funds for narco kingpins. (Reps for Waked said the business is legit)
Our investigation uncovered this explosive detail: when HSBC's DPA was nearing its end in 2017, the independent monitor's team wrote to DOJ saying HSBC continued to provide financial services to suspicious people or companies, which could allow alleged criminals to fund terror
When our #FinCENFiles investigation uncovered that HSBC's independent monitor documented in a 1K page report that the bank still a long way to go to stop the flow of dirty money through the bank @BuzzFeedNews & I filed a #FOIA lawsuit against DOJ for the report.
After @BuzzFeedNews and I filed this #FOIA lawsuit for the HSBC monitor's report, DOJ reached out to HSBC about it and then HSBC wrote to DOJ asking the agency not to turn it over to us & mischaracterized a 2nd Circuit decision over a previous attempt to unseal the report
Some EXCLUSIVE news here: Last month, in response to my/@BuzzFeedNews#FOIA lawsuit for the HSBC monitor's report, the govt submitted a declaration revealing that it was withholding the report because its release would interfere with an ongoing law enforcement case out of EDNY
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A little backstory on this week's FOIA Files newsletter 🧵
Not long after Russia launched airstrikes in Ukraine in 2022, I started seeing tweets that said some of Russia’s targets were labs where Ukraine had secretly been developing bio weapons w/the help of the US govt 1/
The allegations seemed to be an obvious attempt to justify the invasion. They garnered thousands of retweets. Soon Fox News was amplifying the claims.
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The stories had a huge impact. One poll in late March of that year found that more than a quarter of Americans believed the US-Ukraine bioweapons theory.
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NEW FOIA Files newsletter is out with a SCOOP based on 2500 pages of docunents about how a Defense Dept office struggled to fend off a "Russian lie" related to biolabs in Ukraine after the February 2022 invasion
The documents provide a rare behind-the-scenes look into an escalating disinformation war during a critical two-month period after the Ukraine invasion
It took me more than a year to liberate these records from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the division that was targeted by Russia's disinformation campaign
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One name that stands out prominently in the cache is Robert Pope, the director of DTRA’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Pope said he’d suspected that his agency would eventually wind up in Russia’s crosshairs.
SCOOP: 2nd edition of my weekly newsletter, FOIA Files, is out (SUBSCRIBE!), based on FBI docs related to the classified docs Trump took to MAL & how the Aug 2022 search roiled some of FBI's rank & file
The FBI employee sent that email to the FBI ombudsman shortly after the MAL search. “If he took documents, give him a call and ask for them back. Like ...Seriously? My own agency .... A bunch of democrat political hacks up top…I've lost just about all faith in our leadership”
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Another FBI employee was even harsher, characterizing the bureau as a “Banana Republic” and an “embarrassment,” and demanding answers to a series of questions.
Fighting for records continues to be painstaking, difficult work but my @business colleagues & I still managed to overcome the culture of secrecy & pry loose 1000s of pages of docs from state & federal agencies this year
The greatest hits
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The ultimate META FOIA: I FOIA'd Trump's FOIA to the IRS & then in Jan @laurapdavison & I landed this scoop: Trump used the FOIA to try and hinder IRS release of his tax returns
@laurapdavison Also in Jan, a FOIA lawsuit @business & I filed against NARA resulted in the first release docs related to the retrieval of 15 boxes of presidential records Trump stored at Mar-a-Lago.
🧵 For the past decade, DOD has been ignoring a handful of my #FOIA requests, the ones I didn't sue over
This week, I have received 9 letters from the agency asking me if I am still interested in receiving docs in response to requests I filed in 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018 & 2020
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These requests related to documents I sought about Guantanamo, Afghanistan, drone strikes and pressing policy issues. DOD just blatantly violated the law and didn't process a single one.
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These "still interested" letters are often sent out at the end of the fiscal year when agencies pad their FOIA stats and try to show their complying with the law. It's deceptive.
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