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A global investigation into an offshore bank suspected of helping hundreds of clients in at least five countries evade taxes and launder funds has identified more financial institutions and individuals that may have facilitated illicit activity, U.K. and Australian officials said Thursday.

The ongoing probe dates back to early 2019 and is among the first launched by the joint chiefs of global tax enforcement, or J5, a coalition that tax authorities from Britain, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States formed to locate undeclared income and tackle cross-border financial crime.

Officials have not publicly identified the offshore lender already under investigation, but U.S. and Australian news outlets have named Euro Pacific Bank, which previously operated in St. Vincent and the Grenadines before relocating to San Juan, Puerto Rico, as the target.

Investigators are sifting through a trove of data and have already uncovered evidence pointing to potential misconduct by other unidentified parties, Simon York, director and chief investigation officer at HM Revenue and Customs, and Will Day, deputy commissioner for the Australian Taxation Office, said during a joint press conference Thursday.

“The J5 has encountered additional spinoff cases, which focus on inquiries involving other financial institutions, facilitators and service providers, as well as taxpayers that may be participating in such arrangements,” Day said. “We are continuing to work through the full range of criminal, civil and regulatory actions available in each of those countries.”

Officials from the five nations first disclosed the investigation into the financial institution and its suspected “intermediaries” in June 2019. Six months later, in January 2020, investigators executed search warrants and subpoenas, and questioned several individuals as part of the case.

Then, in October of last year, The New York Times and the Age, a Melbourne-based news outlet, cited suspicions by unidentified sources within the J5 that hundreds of suspected tax evaders and money launderers held accounts at Euro Pacific.

The Age further reported that Euro Pacific’s “international partners,” such as NatWest, Bank of Montreal and Japan’s Mizuho Bank, were also under investigation alongside Australia’s Westpac, which paid a record $1 billion fine last year for violating AML rules and maintained a correspondent relationship with the San Juan-based private lender until 2018.

In an Oct. 20 statement, representatives of Euro Pacific said that the lender “has not been contacted by any foreign regulators or taxing authorities” despite reports to the contrary and would welcome the chance to discuss its “first-class compliance programs” with officials.

Puerto Rico classifies Euro Pacific as an international financial entity, or IFE, a specially regulated category of private lenders that qualify for tax breaks and other benefits for serving U.S. and overseas clients while shunning local business.

Because IFEs primarily provide wealthy foreigners with access to U.S. dollar-denominated accounts, and, until recently, were examined solely by Puerto Rico’s domestic regulator, the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions, they have been in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities who view them as uniquely vulnerable to money launderers and other criminals.

In September, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network finalized a rule that expands standard anti-money laundering obligations and supervision to these and other state-chartered entities that previously lacked federal oversight from Washington, D.C.

“Big investigations like these are a gold mine in terms of intelligence and additional lines of inquiry,” HMRC’s Simon York said Thursday. “We are all getting dividends from this and following the trails from the original investigation.”

During Thursday’s press conference, Niels Obbink, managing director of the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service, separately revealed that prosecutors in Rotterdam earlier that day sought a 3-year jail sentence against an individual they accused of laundering some €100,000 through a cryptocurrency mixer.

The case built upon evidence first unearthed during a cryptocurrency data-mining exercise the J5 hosted in Los Angeles in November 2019, Obbink said.

Contact Valentina Pasquali at vpasquali@acams.org