Elizabeth Warren And Bernie Sanders Want Big Banking Reforms Following The FinCEN Files Investigations
Lawmakers, regulators, and activists across the globe Monday called for swift action into the findings of a new investigation from BuzzFeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists about corruption in the global banking system and how governments facilitate it.
In the FinCEN Files, a series of stories that began publishing Sunday, BuzzFeed News and its partners revealed how the giants of Western banking move trillions of dollars in suspicious transactions, enriching themselves and their shareholders while facilitating the actions of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on Monday for reforming the government practice of offering banks deferred prosecution agreements instead of real punishments when they are caught abetting money laundering, one of the problems highlighted in the series.
“We must root out this corruption by strengthening transparency of financial networks and clamp down on the dark money that flows through the global financial system,” she said.
The Massachusetts Democrat called for the creation of a new unit in the US Treasury Department, separate from FinCEN, “to investigate these types of financial crimes.”
She also called for the passage of her so-called Ending Too Big to Jail Act, legislation she introduced in 2018 that she said would hold Wall Street executives criminally accountable when the banks they lead break the law. This, she said, would stop the practice of allowing “bankers to walk away with drop in the bucket settlements and slaps on the wrist.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders also described the series as revealing “the routine business practices on Wall Street.”
“The business model of Wall Street is fraud. It is not the exception to the rule—it is the rule,” he said on Twitter. “Break them up.”
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