Treasury Department officials fielded financial information requests on American citizens from the Russian government in the run-up to the 2016 election, Buzzfeed news reports.
The communications appeared to occur amid management and organizational issues at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Treasury’s illicit finance monitoring and prevention division. The communication with unofficial email addresses set up by Russia, as opposed to use of a secure network, was occurring without the knowledge of some officials at the Treasury Department, per Buzzfeed News.
“They are passing information that may have interest to the Russians for other reasons,” Buzzfeed cites a FinCEN official as writing to colleagues in March 2017. “One has to wonder what the heck is going on here.”
Buzzfeed reports that the Russian side was interested in information “on at least two dozen dissidents, academics, private investigators, and American citizens.” It’s not clear how much — or what — information was exchanged.
Read Buzzfeed News’ full report here.
WTF? They knew they were giving financial information on Americans to the Russians? Through f’ing Hotmail and gmail accounts?
As part of international cooperation against terrorists and other money launderers, this kind of information exchange is perfectly reasonable, at least on the surface. Then you read the rest of the Buzzfeed article and realize that there’s little question FinCen was penetrated by russian agents at multiple levels. As well as being sabotaged by upper management to keep it from doing its job in general. (Which, btw, helps explain how people who shouldn’t have gotten copies of FinCen documents did so.)
Absolutely agree on the sharing information to track terrorists and money laundering. But from the article it appears they exercised zero discretion about sharing the information. And geez, I don’t even respond to emails from Hotmail accounts.
The use of “unofficial email addresses set up by Russia” is the tell that these Treasury staffers were up to no good. They need to be identified, investigated, and if necessary prosecuted. This is BS and cannot stand. Too many Americans are selling us out. To Russia, of all countries! We need to update Lenin’s quote - “The Capitalists will (sell) give us the rope with which we will hang them.”
White collars criminals in the U.S. are ALWAYS above the law. Unless they swindle other white collar criminals (Bernie Madoff was stupid enough to do that.)