What aspect of the nature of international banking gives US prosecutors the reach they need?*

I really don’t know about the “they need” part but I can speculatively answer this question** if that phrase is replaced by “they have”.

What aspect of the nature of international banking gives US prosecutors the reach they have?*

Apparently, every forex trade in the world – even the ones between currency pairs not involving USD – needs the involvement / approval of Fed New York.

That is, if India buys something from Germany and needs to sell INR and buy EUR to fund the purchase, that forex transaction goes via USA.

Let’s say

  1. A crime happens in a country outside USA
  2. Something about the commissioning of that crime breaks American laws
  3. Ergo US prosecutors are interested in investigating that crime even though it happened outside American soil
  4. Said country is not cooperating with US investigators.

In this situation, USA can threaten to cut off that country’s forex operations, thereby forcing it to turn over evidence to US prosecutors.

There’s an interesting case of a bank heist in Eastern Europe being prosecuted for money laundering in USA. I read about in the 26 April 2021 issue of Matt Levine’s Money Stuff newsletter:

Here is a story about three guys from Brooklyn who allegedly noticed that banks in eastern Europe were not as secure as banks in Brooklyn, and so decided to rob them.

“The crimes we allege in this indictment read like something straight out of Hollywood fiction,” says an FBI agent in the press release, and he is right. Good story!

Weird that they were arrested? To be clear, this is not a case of police in “Ukraine, Russia, North Macedonia, Moldova, Latvia, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan” noticing the crimes, identifying the perpetrators, tracking them to Brooklyn and asking U.S. authorities to arrest and extradite them. This is the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York arresting them on his own initiative, not to ship them off to Ukraine etc. to be prosecuted for bank robbery, but to prosecute them in Brooklyn for … money … laundering?

This case seems to have involved #1, 2 and 3 but I’ve no idea about #4.

*: This is the original question I answered. I’m repeating it to help me make sense of my answer in case it’s moved to / merged with some other question that I didn’t answer.

**: DISCLAIMER: I’m neither a lawyer, nor your lawyer, this is not legal advice.