Thread by @Dry_Observer

There's another motivation that crops up: When you're talking about money on the scale we have flowing through the markets in places like Florida, New York City & London, *everyone* invested in the market ends up w/a stake in property inflation, even if not directly involved.

If you're speculating, or being paid rents in a market that can bear the cost, seeing property values go up 10, 20 or 50% in a short time is very enticing.

But it creates a bigger problem when you're looking at rooting it *out,* market collapse.
.@FBI @ericgarland @LouiseMensch

People have been asking why, say, the UK government hasn't dropped the hammer faster & harder on Russia.

No one gains from a market crash except more speculators.

But that's why targeted sanctions are *freezing* oligarch/Russian-organized-crime assets.
.@FBI .@GCHQ

And why it was important to drop that hammer before all the others.

Oligarchs & their businesses so widely and deeply invested were a perfect target. #FinCEN just forced an enormous number of banks & other enablers to cut off de facto mob bosses.
.@FBI .@GCHQ

Which almost *never* happens with organized crime. If you take their money, they *own* you.

But they've hit an interesting tipping point.

If you're a bank, you cooperate w/#FinCEN investigations, or you cease to be a bank.
.@FBI .@GCHQ

If you can't be countersigned by US banks, you can't be countersigned by *anyone.*

This side of North Korea.

First we freeze the assets.

Then we seize the assets.
.@FBI .@GCHQ

But making the *banks* step forward on a global scale, obey the law & break with the oligarchs was always key.

Everyone knows their grip is finished, which is psychologically critical.
.@FBI .@GCHQ

But more importantly, there are bankers, lawyers, executives - all manner of corporate officers - who are now being forced to choose openly between their fiduciary duty to their stockholders (& obeying the law) & vassalhood to global organized crime.
.@FBI .@GCHQ

Whether they consciously processed it before, that's where they are now.

And given the scale of the crimes, & the degree to which everything is exposed w/hard evidence, everyone knows they either do the right thing, the *legal* thing, or they go into the abyss.
.@FBI .@GCHQ

We *start* with banks & other business partners having to freeze assets, reject investments, end relationships.
.@FBI .@GCHQ

We *move* to banks needing to know (or acknowledge) the “ultimate beneficial owners” of those LLCs used to anonymously own assets instead of pretending the real guy own 157 separate companies & actually lives & works out of a post office box.
.@FBI .@GCHQ

But we *end* with a ton of lawyers, boards of directors, key employees & other interested parties acknowledging their duty is to the company & thus the law, and not to tainted or flagrantly criminal executives.

Because the alternative is going down with them.
.@FBI .@GCHQ

So yes, we start with freezing and seizing *some* assets.

We move to freezing and seizing *all* of them.

But the *brief* pause before the end is an entirely different step.

The *confessional.*
.@FBI .@GCHQ

Ask yourself just how *many* companies will have a great deal to share as the .@FBI/#FinCEN get cracking - *openly* - on this part of things.

That part they're already *all* *over.*

Compromised banks, media & tech companies, legal/lobbying firms.

& a #FARA cascade.
.@GCHQ