THE ANDORRA HUSTLE was produced from March, 2019 to August, 2020, with on-location investigations and filming conducted in Andorra, Spain, Belgium, and the United States.

When director Eric Merola began this investigation he was unaware of the depth of the story and how it related to Madrid’s covert war with Catalonia. Merola’s original interest was of simple curiosity in how the US Treasury has the power to effectively close any bank of its choosing, anywhere in the world, by simply issuing a press release called a “Section 311” — with the intention of “protecting the US financial system from money laundering and terrorist financing”. 

Since the enactment of the USA Patriot Act in 2001, which gave birth to FinCEN’s “Section 311”: 26 banks in the world had a “Section 311” placed against them, including BPA, with 16 of those 26 banks having their “Section 311” notice “rescinded” or “withdrawn” shortly after, including BPA. All of these banks were tiny banks with no significant standing whatsoever in the world’s financial system. [Source]

Simultaneously, numerous large powerful banks that had been caught red-handed laundering billions for various drug cartels and terrorist groups never had a “Section 311” issued against them. These banks include HSBC (over $1 billion laundered for the Sinaloa Drug cartel, Iran terrorist groups, etc), Danske bank ($230 billion for Russian criminal groups, Iran, and North Korea); the list goes on and on.

It became apparent that FinCEN’s “Section 311” is being used for everything but “protecting the US financial system”, and is instead being used as a political weapon—like a drone missile to take out any bank of its choosing to accomplish certain political goals. The fact that 16 of the 26 banks that were destroyed by a “Section 311” since 2001 were later withdrawn, implicitly demonstrates that at least 16 of those 26 banks had no money laundering activity that FinCEN could prove, including BPA. When a “Section 311” is issued against a bank, all correspondent banks must immediately cut ties with that bank—resulting in that bank’s inability to operate—thus resulting in its closure.

Once a bank is closed due to a “Section 311”, what happens to all the money in that bank? What happens to the life saving of families and all the bank accounts of the innocent customers? This entire process sets the stage for an opportunity to co-opt everyone’s accounts and effectively and legally commit an old fashioned bank robbery. This has been apparent in the case of BPA.

Since the US Treasury’s withdrawal of its “Section 311” against BPA was the fastest in its history, and since the owners of BPA were working with American attorneys taking FinCEN to court in the United States requesting the US Treasury provide proof of money laundering at BPA, and since BPA was the only “on shore” bank in Andorra—the more this story unraveled, the more intriguing it became.

Then, once Merola dug deeper and discovered that this entire event occurred because of Spain’s war with Catalonia, and found smoking gun evidence of the political intentions behind the entire “Section 311” against BPA…  Merola concluded, “this needs to be a documentary!”