These documents prove the IRS was the driving force behind OCIF’s action against the bank, that it was all done as a PR stunt for the J5, as they needed something to promote their brand internationally, and prove they could disrupt tax evasion and money laundering wherever it took place. IRS Chief Jim Lee lied during the OCIF press conference when he said that OCIF acted independently to shut down the bank. But the email he received from Will Day of the ATO proves that the shutdown of the bank was illegally negotiated between the IRS and OCIF.

It’s clear the J5 needed the bank shut down to achieve these ends. They also needed the press conference to promote the story, and may have even wrote the OCIF Commissioner’s prepared remarks for her. The J5 even admitted that but for their actions, the bank would not have been shut down. But the neither the IRS had no legal basis to shut down the bank. So they got the OCIF Commissioner to make up an excuse to shut it down instead. But not only was this a violation of law, but a violation of the Commissioner’s fiduciary duty to depositors.

The smoking gun is the July 1st 2022 email from ATO Chief Will Day to IRS Chief Jim Lee, where Day congratulates Lee and his team for “negotiating today’s outcome with OCIF.” This proves that Jim Lee lied during the press conference when he claimed that OCIF acted independently of the IRS. If the action against the bank was the result of a negotiation between the IRS and OCIF, then OCIF did not act independely.

Also, Day wrote “it may not have been an outcome we initially set out to achieve, but it is extremely
powerful for the J5 to demonstrate that it has the reach to disrupt the enablers of tax crime not
just in our own jurisdictions, but anywhere in the world.” This is a clear admission by one of the J5 Tax Chiefs that it was the J5, and not OCIF that was responsible for the shutdown of the bank, despite their own investigation finding no evidence that the bank actually facilitated tax crimes. Since the J5 did not find any actual evidence the bank did anything wrong, they salvaged their failed investigation by getting OCIF to shutdown the bank so they could use the shutdown as a demonstration of the J5’s power.

This one email makes it’s clear that but for the intervention of the IRS on behalf of the J5, the bank never would have been shut down, as the OCIF Commissioner had already decided to approve the sale of the bank to Qenta.

It’s also clear from the emails from Justine Cole, Communications Director of IRS CI, to Jim Lee, that Cole and his team worked with OCIF to arrange the OCIF press conference and likely the action to shutdown the bank as well. Cole convinced Lee to speak at the press conference and even drafted his prepared remarks, with the help of other IRS agents who worked on the Atlantis Investigation of Euro Pacific Bank.