https://thehill.com/policy/finance/banking-financial-institutions/517322-north-korea-laundering-money-through-us-banks

A leak of documents from leading financial institutions revealed a massive North Korean scheme to evade sanctions by laundering money through U.S. banks, according to NBC News.

The documents were part of a massive leak of suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), originally obtained by BuzzFeed News. The reports revealed an extensive effort by North Korean officials to launder at least $174 million over a period of several years through major U.S. banks such as JPMorgan Chase using an array of shell companies and sometimes assisted by Chinese businesses.

"The documents you have in front of you, I think help explain why the North Koreans have been so successful at sanction evasion," Hugh Griffiths, former head of the United Nations Panel of Experts tracking sanctions on North Korea, told NBC News. "What you have is gold dust because so few journalists, or investigators generally, get access to banking internal compliance documentation."

"Taken as a whole, you have what really, frankly, looks like a concerted attack by the North Koreans to access the U.S. financial system over an extended period of time through multiple different avenues in ways that were fairly sophisticated," Eric Lorber, a former Treasury Department official, added to NBC.

Treasury Department officials refused to comment on the information revealed in the SARs when contacted by the news network, adding that it had referred the matter to the Justice Department.

"As FinCEN has stated previously, the unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime that can impact the national security of the United States, compromise law enforcement investigations, and threaten the safety and security of the institutions and individuals who file such reports," said the agency.