WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th January, 2020) Former US Treasury official pleaded guilty to conspiring to illegally leak to the media sensitive data on Russia's Embassy, Donald Trump's campaign managers and Russian national Maria Butina, indicted in the United States as an unregistered foreign agent, US Department of Justice said in a statement.
"Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards... a former senior adviser at the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to unlawfully disclose Suspicious Activity Reports," the statement said.
The US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York said Edwards "illegally repeatedly" transmitted SARs and other sensitive government information to an unnamed reporter resulting in approximately 12 news articles over one-year period, beginning in approximately October 2017 and lasting until her arrest in October 2018.
"The illegally disclosed SARs pertained to, among other things, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, the Russian Embassy, Maria Butina and Prevezon Alexander," the statement said.
"Maintaining the confidentiality of SARs, which are filed by banks and other financial institutions to alert law enforcement to potentially illegal transactions, is essential to permit them to serve their statutory function, and the defendant's conduct violated the integrity of that critical system and the law," the statement quoted US Attorney Geoffrey Berman as saying.
Manafort and Gates were investigated as part of the probe into allegations of Trump-Russian collusion. Butina served more than a year in US prison for failing to register as a foreign agent and was deported to Russia last October. Prevezon's company has been suspected by the US authorities of money laundering, according to court documents.
