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U.S. officials have penalized several financial institutions in recent years for “wire stripping,” or obscuring the involvement of Iran, Sudan and other blacklisted countries in correspondent transactions by hiding key details from interbank payment messages. But banks who routinely process such transactions still have limited means of preventing unscrupulous third parties and overseas institutions from using the wrong messaging format, an MT 202, to disguise transfers as lower-risk “bank-to-bank” payments that do not involve any clients, blacklisted or otherwise, sources told ACAMS moneylaundering.com. The 11 data fields of the MT 202, a message promulgated by the Society for Worldwide Interbank...