The value of investigative journalism

A couple days ago, the FT published "'Kiss of death’: how the US killed a Swiss merchant bank. MBaer survived years of scrutiny at home — before Washington stepped in to seal its fate." The article goes into details regarding an investigation that the Swiss banking watchdog (FINMA) ran for years, before the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from the United States Department of the Treasury decided to take action. FINMA took an interest on MBaer in 2023, opening a formal investigation the year after. The FT added "One investigating agent found roughly 80 per cent of the bank’s client relationships were classified as high risk and that 98 per cent of incoming assets came from such clients." Still, FINMA did nothing.

This site's seminal work about MBaer was posted on March 2021. We followed up with another on June 2021, on the back of information regarding Mike Baer's seeking capital investments from Francisco D'Agostino in October 2017. Baer pitched to D'Agostino on U.S. soil without the required license. D'Agostino's partner, Alessandro Bazzoni, had been copied (as shareholder) in an internal MBaer email about capital increase at the end of November 2020. Bazzoni's wife, Siri Evjemo-Nysveen, had been appointed to MBaer's board in September 2020. In January 2021, Treasury announced sanctions against Alessandro Bazzoni, Francisco D’Agostino and others in the larger context of measures targeting PDVSA and Alex Saab's criminal network. Treasury removed Bazzoni and D'Agostino from its designated sanctions list in January 2025.

FinCEN has published advisory reports about corruption in Venezuela, but when it comes to banks involved in what it perceives as money laundering conduits only Banca Privada D'Andorra (BPA) and MBaer have been singled out. There is now ample and available evidence of how associates and relatives of high chavista officials used BPA to launder over $2 billion worth of commissions and bribe payments. MBaer on the other hand, is the first ever Swiss bank to be liquidated following a FinCEN announcement. Its business model was such that it prompted a FINMA investigation, whose findings included "... serious organisational deficiencies, repeatedly failed to comply with anti-money laundering obligations, had processed transactions for clients under sanctions and allowed some to circumvent asset freezes" as reported by the FT. Ultimately, FINMA and FinCEN only corroborated what this site had reported.

The FT included opinions of legal experts that found "... the FinCen report as “thin”, noting its reliance on blog posts and other public reporting." Well, guess the blog. If the value of investigative journalism were to be measured by institutional measures, OFAC sanctions designations, and criminal investigations that end up with asset freezes, guilty pleads and imprisonments, then the "thin" work of this site has managed to capture just the right attention.

Nicolas Maduro's favorite "businessman" was once arrested on the back of investigations that the U.S. Department of Justice first read on this site. Treasury and Homeland Security read this site often. And it cuts both ways: lawyers for Switzerland's biggest trading houses used information published here once to expose the lies of David Boies in the context of PDVSA US Litigation Trust lawsuit.

Not long ago someone approached us with an offer to buy this site for $250,000. Rather, we'll carry on collecting scalps.