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  • edited September 2020
    ORK. No ethics. Reminds me of a few other people. And maybe some RUSSIAN banks??? Thanks for that thread.

  • Doesn't surprise me one bit.
  • After DB, which accounted for over half of the $2B in flagged (not necessarily illegal) transactions comes JPMorgan (since acquired by Chase JPM) accounting for 1/4 ($500B) of the flagged transactions. No other bank comes close. A UK bank, Standard Chartered, is third at under 10% (about $180B), then another US Bank, BNY Mellon BK at 3%. No Russian banks on the receiving end of these flagged transactions (obviously).

    For full details, see: https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/

    The article that davidrmoran linked to says that "To make it all happen, the perpetrators needed a Western bank to work with them." As an investor, ISTM it is those western banks that I need to keep an eye on. I'm not going to be investing in Russian banks, even should they be scrupulously clean and profitable.

    That's not to say that there isn't a lot of corruption in Russian banks. See, e.g. Vast Offshore Network Moved Billions With Help From Major Russian Bank
    https://www.occrp.org/en/troikalaundromat/vast-offshore-network-moved-billions-with-help-from-major-russian-bank

    As an investor, what's actionable regarding Russian banks? "The Troika [now owned by Sberbank] Laundromat report named at least half a dozen major Western banks that had been recipients of the money, sending their shares tumbling and sparking internal investigations." So again there is that. (Citibank is mentioned as referring 20% of Troika's new clients.)

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/03/07/troika-bank-scandal-exposed-global-failure-to-prevent-money-laundering-a64730

    As a customer (as opposed to an investor), the first bank that pops into my mind when ethics are mentioned is Wells Fargo. Lewis mentioned WaMu (now owned by the aforementioned Chase). While it may not come to mind quite as quickly, BofA is right up there as well on the list of ethically challenged consumer banks.

    There's no question that DB is one of the leading money laundering offenders. The good news is that there doesn't seem to be any mutual fund where DB constitutes more than a tiny sliver of its portfolio. Though AEGFX is so large ($166B), that its tiny ¼% of AUM still constitutes 2½% ownership of the bank.
  • " JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of New York Mellon Corp fell 4.4% and 5.6%, respectively, on reports that several global banks moved large sums of allegedly illicit funds over nearly two decades despite red flags about the origins of the money.

    The S&P banking subindex lost 4.5% "

    Complement of Schwab.
    Derf
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