Charlotte Grieve sent this email to Westpac, a former Correspondent Bank of Euro Pacific Bank. In this email she informs a Westbank representative that the bank is the subject of a confidential criminal investigation for facilitating money laundering, tax evasion and serious and organized crime, which she only knows about due to an illegal leak. It is extremely unethical and defamatory for her to divulge this information to other banks, especially as she has no evidence that the bank is actually guilty committing any crimes.
In her email she claims that Westpac’s relationship with Euro Pacific Bank was “terminated
after risks were identified with its operations.” This is a lie. First of all, she had no idea why the relationship was terminated. So she just made that up. It’s likely that she told the same lie to others. The fact is that Westpac did not identify any problems specific to Euro Pacific Bank. Instead Westpac paid a $2 billion fine for AML violations related to 16 other banks it offered correspondent services to. Ms. Grieves referenced that complaint in her email, and asked if Euro Pacific Bank was one of those banks. It was not, and even the Age article acknowledged that fact. As a result of that large fine, and the risk inherited in providing correspondent services, Westpac decided to get out of that business. So the relationship with Euro Pacific Bank was terminated along with the relationships with many other banks, even though those no AML violations were attributed to those banks.