Here is what I believe happend to Euro Pacific Bank.
Euro Pacific Bank was investigated by a grand jury in California for suspicion of money laundering and tax evasion. The investigation lasted about two years, involved over 2,000 accounts, and over 800,000 pages of documents. The investigation ended with no incitements as no evidence was found that the bank in any way assisted customers launder money or evade taxes. As all Euro Pacific Bank customers know, the bank's compliance was over-the-top strict. 30 of the banks 65 employees worked in compliance, and the bank went above and beyond what most banks do to prevent customers︀ from using their accounts to evade taxes or launder money. That's why to my knowledge︁ no customer of the bank has been found by any foreign jurisdiction to have used︂ their Euro Pacific Bank account to evade taxes or lauder money.
But once an IRS︃ criminal enforcement agent decides to open a case with a grand jury, its very embarrassing︄ if no indictments come out of it. Agents don't open a grand jury investigation unless︅ they are confident of an indictment. It would have been very embarrassing for the IRS︆ agent/s who opened the case against Euro Pacific Bank to come away with nothing.
The stakes were particularly high in this case as the agents likely thought this was going︇ to be a career making case. A huge collar. They had a high-profile/controversial name, and︈ the bank had thousands of customers from all over the world. So expectations were likely︉ raised early on, adding to the embarrassment when it ended up being a giant nothing-burger.︊
Compounding the embarrassment was all the world-wide publicity the case generated as a result of︋ the illegal leak of the grand jury investigation.. So the IRS agents needed something positive︌ to come out of the investigation. Since they had no power to do anything themselves,︍ since they found no evidence of any crimes, they likely got OCIF to shut down︎ the bank, so they could take credit and save face.
In fact, here is what️ Jim Lee said in his prepared remarks at the "OCIF" press conference they convinced the Commissioner to hold three months earlier.
"In full transparency, this is not where I thought we would end up two years ago when we were executing our global day of action with the J5. This is what we would call a non-traditional component within an investigation – there is no indictment of the bank or those running it today. But investigations sometimes lead us in a number of different positive directions and this is certainly one of them. "
So that's it. I think the sale to Qenta was rejected,︀ the press conference held, and the bank put into receivership, for the sole purpose of︁ allowing the IRS/J5 to salvage something out of their massive investigation that found noting.
IRS internal emails confirm that on or before April 4th of 2022 the IRS and OCIF︂ agreed to hold a press conference on June 30/July 1, to announce the closure of︃ my bank. The J5 was formed on July 1st, 2018. IRS Chief Jim Lee began︄ his prepared remarks at that conference by stating "four years ago this week" the J5︅ was formed. So the closure of my bank, and the press conference to announce it︆ was secretly planned months in advance to commemorate the 4-year anniversary of the formation of︇ the J5. Clearly the IRS/J5 not only picked the date of the press conference, but︈ was likely responsible for the decision to close the bank, even though they had no︉ cause or jurisdiction to do so.
The fact that OCIF waited three months to issue︊ the C&D, after it already secretly decided to reject the sale and close the bank,︋ so that the press conference would coincide with the 4-year anniversary of the J5, is︌ more proof there was no emergency. Protecting customers had nothing to do with the decision︍ to put the bank into receivership. That was just a pretense. It's likely that closing︎ the bank was just part of the plan to make the bank look bad for️ the benefit of the IRS/J5 and the media.
