No, it was an article by a European economist who was complaining about every transaction above a certain amount getting quietly reviewed in the US, before being released to the onward bank.
This is the banking Secrecy Act which handles money laundering stuff. AFAIK, it should be the local regulator that sees any transaction reports, but maybe I'm missing something.
That’s probably related to transactions large enough to warrant immediate settlement via a US federal reserve bank. Given US federal reserve banks sit at the heart of US dollar transactions (pretty much by definition, they’re the only entities actually capable of creating US dollars), very large transactions that create significant flow imbalances between two banks trading US dollars anywhere in the world, will result in a settlement at a federal reserve.
But that only applies to transactions happening in US dollars, and SWIFT deals in far more than US dollars. For US dollar transactions it’s easy to imagine federal reserve banks slowing the settlement process and demanding extra data. Something that would be very annoying for foreign banks to deal with, but hardly unexpected. The US does ultimately control the US dollar after all, and at least for now the US dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, which naturally gives the US an outsized influence in world financial markets. But Trump also seems hell bent on testing that privilege to breaking point.
