Agyapa Royalty Partner Caught Among Banks That Suspiciously moved US$ 2 trillion

J.P Morgan Chase a Banking conglomerate is among the latest leak of illegal money transaction of multinational banks across the country. Contents of the leak dubbed the FinCEN leaks was released today across several global media outlets today, September 20, 2020.

In the FinCEN leaks, JP Morgan reportedly allowed a company to move more than $1bn through a London account without knowing who owned it. The bank later discovered the company might be owned by a mobster on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list.

J.P Morgan Chase owns J.P. Morgan Securities plc (JPM), a company contracted by Ghana’s Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to help structure the controversial Agyapa Royalty deal that will see Ghana’s gold and other mineral royalties channelled suspiciously through that tax haven of Jersey, where Agyapa is registered.

Already, the Agyapa Royalty deal in Ghana has raised serious suspicion in Ghana, given the scheming around it and the fact that most of the facilitators of the transaction are linked to the Presidency and the Finance Minister of Ghana.

The Finance Ministry has been accused of hiding its true intension for taking over some US$ 200 million annual mineral royalty belonging to Ghana and allegedly monetize it through Agyapa, a company whose true private owners have remained a mystery to Ghanaians authorities and parliamentarians.

The transaction claims the unknown shareholders of Agyapa will advance some US$500 million to Ghana in return for a lifetime cut of 49% or more of Ghana’s annual mineral royalties.

For the Agyapa deal to work, the Finance Minister had caused an existing law, the Minerals Income Investment Fund Act, 2018 (Act 978) (MIIF) to be amended to give sweeping and unprecedented privileges to the private owners of Agyapa Royalties.

The suspicious nature of the deal has led critics to conclude that it is an elaborate money-laundering scheme cooked by the Finance Ministry.

Meanwhile, the FinCEN leaks were tracked by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) made up of hundreds of investigative journalists who pored over 2,500documents of these shady transactions involving about $2tn of transactions have revealed how some of the world’s biggest banks have allowed criminals to move dirty money around the world.

The FinCEN was leaked to Buzzfeed News and shared with a group that brings together investigative journalists from around the world, which distributed them to 108 news organisations in 88 countries, including the BBC’s Panorama programme.

Hundreds of journalists have been sifting through the dense, technical documentation, uncovering some of the activities that banks would prefer the public not to know about.

The FinCEN files are more than 2,500 documents, most of which were files that banks sent to the US authorities between 2000 and 2017. They raise concerns about what their clients might be doing.

These documents are some of the international banking system’s most closely guarded secrets which reek of high-profile money-laundering deals.

These dirty money – the proceeds of crimes such as drug dealing or corruption – are channelled into account at respected banks where it will not be linked with the crime.

The named banking conglomerates named in the leaks include Barclays Bank, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of New York, Deutsche Bank, among others.