‘enemies’ trying to destroy him.”
“Yes, and I don’t have strong evidence,” admitted David. “No accounts with his name or that of his close relatives.”
“So what do you have?”
David visibly hesitated, “Alejandro, do you want me to get into gory details?”
“Yeah, I’m harboring fugitives, I want all the details!”
David sighed, “All right. I came across a private investment company that seemed to have made some prescient bets in 2019. In looking at the ownership, Dimon’s name came up a year earlier as a beneficial owner, and then disappeared. As I dug in deeper, did some pattern matching, I found names of people linked to Dimon, friends, extended family, this sort of thing. I put together a list of names and companies; there were dozens of accounts indirectly linked to Dimon, with tens of millions in gains during that period.”
“And how were they making money?”
“Companies paid out distributions, dividends, etc. There are myriads of creative ways to do that, without raising questions. But there was another bothersome issue: many transactions we could not trace because the trail ended up at SOFI.”
“Who is she?”
Maggie laughed, then explained, “It’s not a ‘she.’ The SOFI is an acronym for the system of exchanging financial information, systema obmena finansovoiy informatzii in Russian. You see, until 2015 the vast majority of such data was communicated through the SWIFT, Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. For a banking institution to succeed in a global environment, it had to be a part of the SWIFT. Which in turn helped law enforcement to track down money laundering. At some point the U.S. started using access to the SWIFT as a weapon, blocking the Iranians from the system. And when in 2015 they tried to block the Russians as a part of the standoff over Ukraine, Russia deployed its own interbank system and called it SOFI. The rest of the BRICS countries – China, India, Brazil, and South Africa – also adopted the SOFI as a second interbank system and tied it to the hundred billion dollars New Development Bank they set up in Shanghai that year.”
“And why is that a problem?”
“Now we have two separate systems that are opaque to each other. Moreover, in order to entice people to join the SOFI, Russia imposed very tight data security. Only a few people in the BRICS leadership can access the transactions data,” continued Maggie. “After the SOFI gained adoption with banks covering half of the world’s population, in 2018 the SWIFT had no choice but to agree to establish a number of gateways to the SOFI so at least some authorized transactions for the banks participating in both systems can go across. But once the transaction goes into the SOFI, it might as well fall into a black hole. We can’t trace it any further. Quite a bit of the data that Schulmann collected back in 2020 stops at the border to the SOFI.”
“And why is this important?”
“It implies a possible funding from abroad. Which would be not only suspicious, but likely outright illegal.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“We really have two separate issues here,” David jumped back in. “Firstly, we worked with Schulmann’s data that only goes through the early 2020. I want more transaction data for the accounts that I have identified, going to the current year. A person with a proper security access, such as the SEC or the FBI, should be able to get it. Secondly, we would like to peek behind the SOFI’s veil. That would be harder.”
“And once you have such data?”
“We think that if we gather enough evidence, we should get to the top. Perhaps even to Maxwell,” responded David. “He can stop Dimon.”
“Look, you’ll be surprised, but we have developed quite a bit of computer expertise here. However, getting this kind of data is beyond our reach,” Alejandro shook his head. “How are you planning to get it?”
“Two years ago, Maggie and
“Yes, and I don’t have strong evidence,” admitted David. “No accounts with his name or that of his close relatives.”
“So what do you have?”
David visibly hesitated, “Alejandro, do you want me to get into gory details?”
“Yeah, I’m harboring fugitives, I want all the details!”
David sighed, “All right. I came across a private investment company that seemed to have made some prescient bets in 2019. In looking at the ownership, Dimon’s name came up a year earlier as a beneficial owner, and then disappeared. As I dug in deeper, did some pattern matching, I found names of people linked to Dimon, friends, extended family, this sort of thing. I put together a list of names and companies; there were dozens of accounts indirectly linked to Dimon, with tens of millions in gains during that period.”
“And how were they making money?”
“Companies paid out distributions, dividends, etc. There are myriads of creative ways to do that, without raising questions. But there was another bothersome issue: many transactions we could not trace because the trail ended up at SOFI.”
“Who is she?”
Maggie laughed, then explained, “It’s not a ‘she.’ The SOFI is an acronym for the system of exchanging financial information, systema obmena finansovoiy informatzii in Russian. You see, until 2015 the vast majority of such data was communicated through the SWIFT, Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. For a banking institution to succeed in a global environment, it had to be a part of the SWIFT. Which in turn helped law enforcement to track down money laundering. At some point the U.S. started using access to the SWIFT as a weapon, blocking the Iranians from the system. And when in 2015 they tried to block the Russians as a part of the standoff over Ukraine, Russia deployed its own interbank system and called it SOFI. The rest of the BRICS countries – China, India, Brazil, and South Africa – also adopted the SOFI as a second interbank system and tied it to the hundred billion dollars New Development Bank they set up in Shanghai that year.”
“And why is that a problem?”
“Now we have two separate systems that are opaque to each other. Moreover, in order to entice people to join the SOFI, Russia imposed very tight data security. Only a few people in the BRICS leadership can access the transactions data,” continued Maggie. “After the SOFI gained adoption with banks covering half of the world’s population, in 2018 the SWIFT had no choice but to agree to establish a number of gateways to the SOFI so at least some authorized transactions for the banks participating in both systems can go across. But once the transaction goes into the SOFI, it might as well fall into a black hole. We can’t trace it any further. Quite a bit of the data that Schulmann collected back in 2020 stops at the border to the SOFI.”
“And why is this important?”
“It implies a possible funding from abroad. Which would be not only suspicious, but likely outright illegal.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“We really have two separate issues here,” David jumped back in. “Firstly, we worked with Schulmann’s data that only goes through the early 2020. I want more transaction data for the accounts that I have identified, going to the current year. A person with a proper security access, such as the SEC or the FBI, should be able to get it. Secondly, we would like to peek behind the SOFI’s veil. That would be harder.”
“And once you have such data?”
“We think that if we gather enough evidence, we should get to the top. Perhaps even to Maxwell,” responded David. “He can stop Dimon.”
“Look, you’ll be surprised, but we have developed quite a bit of computer expertise here. However, getting this kind of data is beyond our reach,” Alejandro shook his head. “How are you planning to get it?”
“Two years ago, Maggie and
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