In wake of FinCEN scandal, help regulators do their job
Hello, and welcome to Oligarchy. We are tracking how Covid-19 and the world’s response to it is affecting the super-rich — and what that means for power and politics.
BACK TO SCHOOL
I’m going to start with a digression. I have a friend who used to be a teacher, and his school was assessed on how many of its pupils achieved grades A*, A, B, or C. The principal therefore instructed teachers to focus on pupils predicted to earn a D grade, because, if those children could be lifted up one level to C, the school would hit the government’s target.
However, when the school got inspected, it was criticized for ignoring pupils outside of this narrow group, to which the headteacher’s response was bafflement. They hadn’t wanted to treat the children this way, but the government had told them to, so they’d gone ahead and done it, and now they were being criticized for it?
My friend doesn’t teach anymore, so he no longer spends so much time raging at hypocritical politicians (which is great for him, but a shame for the kids, because he was a great teacher) but his plight came to mind last week when I read the response of the U.K.’s regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), to the FinCEN Files stories published by Buzzfeed News and its partners around the world.