Newly unredacted emails reveal that Australia pushed the global press conference, drafted the false narrative read by IRS Chief Jim Lee, and helped turn a failed investigation into a publicity victory.
This latest batch of newly unredacted IRS emails provides the clearest evidence yet that the shutdown of Euro Pacific Bank was not the result of a sudden emergency, a successful criminal investigation, or newly discovered misconduct by the bank. It was a long-planned international communications operation designed to turn the J5’s failed Operation Atlantis investigation into a highly publicized “success.”
The newly disclosed records show that publicity was embedded in Operation Atlantis from its very beginning. On January 22, 2020, the J5 launched its coordinated “Day of Action,” supported by a worldwide communications campaign involving embargoed press releases, selected journalists, interviews, websites, newsletters, and extensive social-media promotion. Euro Pacific Bank was not publicly identified, but that was the same day two IRS agents came to my home and served me with a Sacramento grand-jury subpoena—an investigation that ultimately produced no indictments. The J5’s subsequent evaluation measured the operation’s success largely through media coverage, website traffic, social-media engagement, and whether the five agencies appeared to be acting as a unified global brand. It even acknowledged that the announcement was “light on facts” and that reporters were frustrated by the lack of details. Nevertheless, the J5 treated the publicity itself as an operational success and planned to keep the story alive as additional facts became available.
Two years later, the J5’s Global Communication Plan shows how that original publicity campaign evolved into an effort to portray OCIF’s shutdown of Euro Pacific Bank as “Stage 2—De-banking.” Its stated goals were not to protect depositors, recover stolen money, prosecute criminals, or stop any identifiable tax evasion. Instead, the plan was designed to “promote tangible success,” reinforce the reputation of the J5, position its chiefs as global leaders, provide a “tangible outcome” for an otherwise unsuccessful investigation, and “continue the J5 Atlantis story.” The plan even established media-performance metrics to measure publicity, social-media reach, website traffic, and the exposure received by the J5.
The new records also move the beginning of the IRS–OCIF collaboration back almost a full year earlier than I previously understood. In a June 30, 2022 response to Law360 reporter Kevin Pinner, the IRS stated that it became aware of OCIF’s work in January 2021 and “at that point” began sharing information with OCIF through official channels. So far the earlest emails the IRS has proced date back to mid-April 2021. That leaves a large information gap that must be filled with future FOIA productions that the IRS is already under court order to produce, but thus far has failed to do so.
The IRS described OCIF as conducting an “independent investigation,” but OCIF was actually performing a routine regulatory examination required by Puerto Rico law. That examination found no evidence that Euro Pacific Bank facilitated tax evasion or money laundering. Its principal findings concerned capital levels and internal controls. Moreover, much of the bank’s capital deterioration resulted from the customer withdrawals and business losses caused by the damaging publicity generated by Operation Atlantis itself. The J5 therefore helped create the financial problems that OCIF later used to justify closing the bank.
The most significant new evidence concerns the role of the Australian Taxation Office and its communications director, Julie Holt. Holt repeatedly pushed the IRS to hold a global press conference in Puerto Rico. In explaining why, she specifically wrote:
“Given the interest from Australian journalists—Nick McKenzie in particular—it would be great if we could consider a global press conference.”
Holt did not merely suggest publicizing an event that the IRS and OCIF had already independently planned. She proposed the global format, the livestream, the speakers, the timing, the press releases, the website content, the social-media campaign, the media invitations, and the broader narrative that would portray the shutdown as proof of the J5’s global power. She continued pressing the IRS for a decision because Australia needed time to organize its media campaign.
Holt then drafted a “key message suite,” which she expressly described as speaking points rather than simply a press release. Those speaking points accused the bank of helping customers conceal wealth through numbered accounts, facilitating tax evasion and money laundering, and preying on “innocent victims,” the very conduct the investigation itself found no evidence of. They characterized the closure as a “huge success” and an “excellent disruption outcome” for the J5.
Much of this language was later read publicly by IRS-CI Chief Jim Lee. Holt also drafted proposed answers for the press-conference Q&A, including language Lee subsequently used almost word for word. The evidence therefore indicates that the central narrative presented by the chief of IRS Criminal Investigation was written largely by the communications director of the Australian Taxation Office.
That is especially troubling because this was happening while my defamation lawsuit against Nick McKenzie, 60 Minutes Australia, The Age, and Nine was still pending. McKenzie’s reporting falsely accused Euro Pacific Bank of facilitating tax evasion and money laundering. Holt expressly cited McKenzie’s particular interest as a reason to organize a global press conference that would publicly associate the bank’s closure with those same crimes.
McKenzie later introduced the action against the bank as evidence in his defense. The Federal Court rejected that effort, and I won the defamation case. These emails do not yet contain an explicit message from McKenzie asking the ATO to procure the closure. But they raise the serious possibility that the ATO helped manufacture an official government event that would validate McKenzie’s reporting and provide him with evidence he otherwise did not have.
Other emails destroy any claim that OCIF acted in response to an immediate emergency. IRS officials were already calling the anticipated shutdown an important J5 “outcome” and congratulating one another on the “win” in May 2022—weeks before the order was issued. The date was then adjusted around Jim Lee’s availability. Because Lee was unavailable during the week of June 20, OCIF offered June 30 or July 1 instead. A genuine banking emergency would not normally be postponed to accommodate the travel schedule of an IRS official who wanted to appear at a press conference.
The event was choreographed in detail. IRS emails laid out the time the bank’s principal would be summoned, the hours during which overseas asset-freeze notices would be delivered, and the scheduled time of the press conference (the plans to summon principals and freeze assets were never carried out). The IRS also planned two separate media events—one focused on OCIF’s action and a second focused specifically on promoting the J5 and Operation Atlantis.
The most disturbing email came directly from OCIF Commissioner Natalia Zequeira. She wrote that the order would be issued in the morning but deliberately withheld from the bank until 1 p.m. “to void an injunction.” She almost certainly meant “avoid an injunction.” The press was scheduled to arrive at 2:30 p.m., with the global event beginning shortly afterward.
In other words, the Commissioner appears to have deliberately delayed notifying the bank so that it would have virtually no opportunity to obtain judicial relief before the closure was implemented and announced to the world. The object was not merely to act without notice. It was to prevent a judge from stopping the action before the publicity event could occur.
Perhaps the most astonishing evidence is what happened on the morning of the press conference. At 10:25 a.m., Jim Lee emailed IRS communications director Justin Cole a list of basic questions. Among them, Lee asked for “2 brief examples” of what Euro Pacific Bank had supposedly done to help its customers evade taxes or launder money.
This was just hours before Lee publicly associated the bank’s closure with those crimes. Yet he still did not know what the bank had actually done.
The written response arrived at 11:18 a.m. and was brief and almost entirely redacted. Cole stated that he was supplying only “a couple quick answers” and that the rest were better discussed orally. Lee provided no concrete examples during the press conference. No owner, director, officer, employee, or customer of the bank was ever charged with tax evasion, money laundering, or any other crime.
That sequence strongly suggests that the public narrative came first and that officials were still searching for facts to support it on the morning the bank was closed.
The later ATO emails reveal an even more malicious objective. Following the liquidation agreement, an ATO official reported that the liquidation conditions would ensure “no benefit to EPB’s owners” and called that result another “significant outcome” for Operation Atlantis. The supposed success was not a conviction, a recovered tax liability, the identification of a victim, or proof that the bank had committed wrongdoing. It was that I would lose my bank and supposedly receive nothing from its assets.
Taken together, these records suggest the following sequence of events:
Operation Atlantis failed to uncover evidence that Euro Pacific Bank facilitated tax evasion or money laundering. The ATO nevertheless wanted a major public outcome, particularly because of Australian media interest and Nick McKenzie’s reporting. The ATO pushed for a global press conference and drafted the messaging that would portray the closure as vindication of the J5 investigation. The IRS worked with OCIF to coordinate the shutdown, schedule the action around Jim Lee’s availability, organize the worldwide press campaign, and prevent the bank from obtaining an injunction before the announcement. Officials then celebrated the destruction of the bank as a J5 victory, despite the absence of charges or evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
The newly unredacted emails do not yet reveal any private communication between the ATO and Nick McKenzie. But they provide compelling circumstantial evidence that the ATO’s interest extended far beyond ordinary tax enforcement. They show that McKenzie was specifically identified as a reason for creating the global event and that the ATO wrote the narrative used to transform the closure into apparent validation of his reporting.
Had I never sued McKenzie and Nine for defamation, there is now a serious question as to whether this global publicity operation would ever have happened—and whether Euro Pacific Bank would ever have been shut down.