So, Jason, I have a really easy first question for you. Can you explain what this story is?

Well, what is this story? This is a story that's actually been almost three years in the making.

And it relies heavily on documents that shows us that oligarchs, drug kingpins, terrorists, and prominent officials

have been engaged in what appears to be a year's long effort to launder money all across the

globe. I know. You're going to need more context. I'm Azeen Gureshi. I'm a reporter and editor

at BuzzFeed News. And this story that my co-worker Jason Jason Leopold, and a whole bunch of others at BuzzFeed have been working on, they keep saying it might be the biggest story of their lives. But it's a little hard to describe. Here's the project's editor, Ariel Kaminer. To me, this is a story about how, what is this story?

It is the story of how the most powerful banks in the world are doing business with the

worst of humanity, helping them move their money around the globe and making a tidy profit

for themselves and their shareholders.

That's BuzzFeed News reporter Anthony Cormier.

This is a story based on government documents that have never been revealed before.

It's a story about dirty money and how with the help of the big global banks, that dirty money gets clean.

Here's how it works.

People take money that is really, really dirty from the worst kinds of for-profit transactions

that exist, from terror financing to narco trafficking, to arms dealership, to all kinds of illegal activity, human trafficking, and they funnel it into

what we think of as the legitimate economy. So the money made off of all that nefarious activity,

it's not off in the black market in a back alley somewhere. It's coursing through the same

banks you and I use and funding industries in every corner of the economy in countries all over

the world. And as Jason and Anthony ended up seeing firsthand, the banks regularly inform the government

that suspicious money is flowing through them. That's shocking enough, but the most shocking is

that the United States government has all of the evidence in its possession.

They know how rotten the system is,

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