[barry-cotter]

> This article is a bit difficult to understand; there's a mixture of actual money laundering with the non-crime of "a really bad person has a bank account". There's a difficult and IMO increasingly urgent question here, of whether the banking system is a utility or something else. There's no whistleblowers from the electricity company, even though it literally kept the lights on for murderers and traffickers. Nobody gets sentenced to "and you are not allowed a bank account for the rest of your life". If a criminal hasn't had their whole wealth confiscated as proceeds of crime by the courts, is the convention now that nonetheless they should be deprived of the ability to use them? Maybe. I really don't know the answer in some hard cases. But it feels like if the banking system is going to be part of the law enforcement system, that needs to be established through actual laws passed through the parliament. As far as I can see there are some charges of actual complicity in the article, but it's hard to separate them from "this bad person was a client". https://twitter.com/dsquareddigest/status/149544584780670566...

[rich_sasha]

Whilst I agree with everything you say (quote?), you’re not meant to bank with unexplained or unsavoury sources of funds. Eg storing money you stole from your murdered is not better than money laundering. Iirc some of the CS clients fell into this category and the bank was very keen to not ask questions.

I’m pretty sure there is a bank somewhere in the Alps where Kim Jong Un has a little bank account under an appropriately obfuscated identity. Probably more than one. Whoever opened it from the bank’s side probably knew something is up but chose not to ask questions. And they are providing banking access to North Korea’s dictator.

[barry-cotter]

> Whilst I agree with everything you say (quote?), you’re not meant to bank with unexplained[1] or unsavoury sources of funds.

Guilty until proven innocent is the legal basis for civil forfeiture too. So by supporting both depriving people of access to banking and criminalizing usage of cash you can fully drive them out of society.

[1] This is the guilty until proven innocent bit

[rich_sasha]

This is a bit different. It sounds like with US civil forfeiture you can just seize any and all assets merely because someone is accused of something unrelated. This I agree is awful.

Bank KYC is a bit different. A bank, certainly at this level, is supposed to know who you are and where your money is coming from ahead of setting up the account. They have to satisfy themselves it’s a legal source. If they become suspicious, they should tip off authorities who can investigate etc.

At no point here can the bank judiciously freeze your assets. All this should mostly happen before the bank even touches your money.

[salawat]

Actually, if you're on the OFAC list, many banks eill open sn account for you, and happily take deposits. They just will not let you withdraw. So Your claim that a bank cannot judiciously freeze your assets is a bit off.

And for the record, nanes going on the OFAC have blast radius. If the U.S. finds out terrorist X has an alias of Temperence Prudence, the other Temperence Prudence's out there can expect some disruption while compliance department's try to figure out if you're a terrorist or not. All without breathing a word of it to the customer.

I know, because I ended up having to troubleshoot that system. It is quite horrifying, and to say the least duplicitous.

[rich_sasha]

It’s not judicious of the banks to freeze assets, it’s set by government agencies. Banks just follow the rules.

I can well imagine the implementation of such rules is done badly, especially in US, but that’s a bit different to this sub thread I think.

[Teever]

Yes but a bank is supposed to do this because a law that was written to force them to do it.

There is not reason other than that, and it's circular logic to sidestep due process to point to the law that says that they have to do it as the reason they have to do it.

[tinalumfoil]

A bank is not legally required to refuse your money until you can prove you haven’t stolen it. A bank maintains very specific set of government mandated processes where if think something is suspicions they report it to the authorities.

Note the difference (1) if you deposit $50 the bank by default assumes you didn’t just murder someone and take their money, this is true even if you served a sentence for that crime and (2) the bank defers to the government on what to do, they’re not expected to run a parallel justice system figuring out who’s worthy for a bank account

[salawat]

They absolutely do have a parallel justice system of who gets to bank, and it's called OFAC, and the international sanction list.

[TomSwirly]

I am starting to believe now that you are deliberately misrepresenting the truth.

This has zero, nothing at all, to do with "guilty until proven innocent". Anonymous banking is simply not allowed anymore, because of literally trillions of dollars in crime money going through Switzerland. Now you are legally required to know your customer, even in Switzerland.

Forcing banks and customers to obey financial disclosure laws and punishing them if they break the law is how the law works.

If you or I walked into a bank with tens of millions of dollars in cash, we would be asked to show ID, and information about the deposit would be sent to the government because it's the law.

It strikes me that you just don't like the law and instead of saying that, you move the goalposts and pretend the law itself doesn't exist.

[remarkEon]

You're right, these are separate issues. What you're describing is really just money laundering, which is already illegal and there a number of dimensions available for this to be discovered and prosecuted under the law. What the person you are replying to is concerned about - and rightfully so[1] - is that zealous enforcement of banking controls, even though it comes from the same principled place of "dictators shouldn't be allowed to hide their funds in country_that_has_laws", can and probably will result in banks making decisions about who has access to banking services based on internal political dynamics. It's a huge elephant in the room that I think deserves more discussion and scrutiny.

[1] https://twitter.com/OttawaPolice/status/1495367658132361216

[vmh1928]

Why post a link to an Ottawa Police tweet about looking for people actively involved in the civil unrest there? If there was an organized conspiracy by right-wing US crisis actors to create chaos and bring downtown Ottawa to a stop, is it overzealous for the police to look into it and any possible crimes committed?

[remarkEon]

To quote the tweet explicitly: "If you are involved in this protest, we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges." [emphasis added]

Protest.

Even the police are telling on themselves here. What's great about the tweet is that the verbiage is context-independent. You can apply that to anything. Imagine a tweet from e.g. the Portland Police Bureau saying this about protests in Downtown Portland - protests which often devolved into violence and actual damage to businesses, something which hasn't happened at all in Ottawa.

So to answer your question, it's an example of where if you are protesting for the "wrong" thing, your finances are now threatened. Are people actually okay with this?

[TomSwirly]

No, the Canadian officials are saying that if you took financial support to participate in a crime, they are going to confiscate that money.

And that's a damned good thing.

[remarkEon]

>>Are people actually okay with this?

Well I guess we have one person who actually is okay with this.

Like I said farther up thread, the next frontier of this debate really is going to be about if we will "allow" people with the "wrong" politics access to the banking systems we all depend on for our livelihood.

[salawat]

So protesting is a crime now?

[csomar]

> Whilst I agree with everything you say (quote?), you’re not meant to bank with unexplained or unsavoury sources of funds.

Who's "you"? The Bank? How does the bank "decide" whether the funds are legitimate or not? Be the judge, the executor and everything else in between?

Am I crazy or this shit~ should have never been acceptable, in a sane world.

~: KYC/AML and what else.

[rich_sasha]

The bank, or any financial institution receiving deposits from random people, has to ask itself: is it likely that this person disposes of such money legally. If yes, accept them as a client, if not, refuse and alert authorities.

Anyone can dispose of £50 or even £5000. If your bank sees a £2k salary come in every month, they won’t be surprised that suddenly you have £50k in your account.

If you knock on their door and say, I’m a lowly administrator in a country in the bottom decile of human development index, can you look after my $100m, the should definitely dig deeper. In such case, yes you should actually document where the money is coming from.

It shouldn’t be such a high burden of proof. Money doesn’t spontaneously appear like particle-antiparticle pairs. Maybe you sold something, or were paid for some services. You should be able to demonstrate that with ease.

Remember, the bank, other things being equal, wants your custom. So they’ll apply the lowest bar possible to make sure the money isn’t stolen, lest the regulators slap them hard.

With CS the issue was, they basically didn’t even do the bare minimum with any degree of honesty and integrity.

[csomar]

You write a lot without addressing my point, basically disregarding it: The point is the bank having deliberation when it comes to making a decision about the source or legitimacy of the money.

This is the job of a judge within a court where the defendant can argue otherwise (to the legitimacy of his money). Period.

Any other system (KYC/AML) should have been anti-constitutional, especially today when most transactions require a bank account. If KYC/AML is required, it should be done by the state (or the local government) itself and let the bank be, you know, a bank.

[rich_sasha]

It basically is how you say it should be, with the pre-sorting distributed to the leaves of the tree (banks and funds).

When a client approaches you, broadly, you have to sort them into low risk, medium risk and high risk.

Low risk you waive through.

Medium risk you do some digging on but if you’re then happy, you continue.

High risk, you alert the authorities. Then they take care of this. You put the client on hold. The authorities may later give you a formal go-ahead. At least this is how AML works in Europe, I’m less familiar with US.

So if the institution is concerned enough to refuse services, they absolutely must alert financial supervisors too, and it’s up to them how to proceed. They give you the go-ahead or the red light.

Strictly speaking you could still refuse a client then, eg if you think they could be on a sanction list soon enough, but that’s business reasons, not supervisory.

[mkim5]

It’s probably no longer useful to think about the state as an entity that cares about things like constitutional rights, or even as a separate “body” like the government, legislature or police. Banks regulate so much of ordinary peoples lives. You say “most transactions require a bank account.” Not to mention the fed/central banking. Banks ARE the state. So I am not surprised if they are given the right or responsibility to KYC

[psd1]

False dichotomy. You're not crazy for having those principles. But you're thinking in terms of "little people" justice.

[pjc50]

Came here to post dsquared's comment. Compare and contrast this thread with the truckers one. We don't really want to force banks into some kind of ill-specified "account cancellation culture".

[Traster]

Actually, to a certain extent, yes, the electricity company is going to report you if you're using too much electricity (this is how pot growers used to be caught), and yes, preventing traffickers from using legitimate banking is absolutely a standard practice, this is literally why money laundering is a thing. Also, if you are stupid enough to get caught money laundering (people will proposition strangers/(young stupid people) and say "cash this money, I'll give you 10%") you'll be blacklisted pretty damn quick - literally penniless teenagers give away their entire future to these scams.

[vmh1928]

back before legalized grow operations:

https://www.postandcourier.com/news/marijuana-bust-shines-li...

[mrandish]

> the non-crime of "a really bad person has a bank account"

> Nobody gets sentenced to "and you are not allowed a bank account for the rest of your life".

You make some thought-provoking points. Over the past decade I've noticed a creeping erosion of the fundamental liberal tenet "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" in the courts of public opinion and media assumption.

[TomSwirly]

> This article is a bit difficult to understand;

Perhaps better not to comment then, because it seems like you didn't actually understand it.

> with the non-crime of "a really bad person has a bank account"

Right off the bat, you are misrepresenting the legal issues involved, which were explained in the article.

The issue in each case was that a really bad person had a secret bank account with a huge amount of money which they could never have acquired legally.

For generations, Swiss banks allowed this, and of course every dictator, embezzler and money launderer took advantage of this.

But finally Switzerland legally prevented this - except Credit Suisse decided not to follow the laws.

IF you are going to continue with this, please familiarize yourself with the relevant laws, starting perhaps here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer

[blablabla123]

> There's no whistleblowers from the electricity company, even though it literally kept the lights on for murderers and traffickers

To play devil's advocate here, if those people completed their sentence and they are being resocialized they have access to what any regular citizen is supposed to access.

OTOH if they haven't been sentenced yet and the electricity company knows of it, I think they are walking on thin ice if they don't report it. I'm sure there are heavy sentences for keeping a blind eye on trafficking.

The other point worth mentioning when money laundering happens, tax evasion or even misappropriation of state money the bank is facilitating those crimes which really stands by itself.

So now I'm really wondering what the legit use case of the anonymous accounts is supposed to be.

[anamax]

> OTOH if they haven't been sentenced yet and the electricity company knows of it, I think they are walking on thin ice if they don't report it.

In what country is "no electricity" (part of) the sentence for murderers? And even in a country where "no electricity" is (part of) the sentence for murder, shouldn't the electric company only impose it in response to a court order?

More to the point, if they haven't been sentenced, why is the electric company imposing a sentence?

Along the same lines, if they haven't been convinced, why is the electric company treating them differently?

[manquer]

You are conflating two different aspects. Almost anyone can be a bank's client, nobody is questioning their right to bank.

The bank not questioning the source of the money they deposit is the problem here. That looks like an intentional institutional gap designed to enable money laundering and tax evasion.

Vladmir Putin is free to open an personal account in any bank. However if he is depositing millions and billions and the bank is not questioning the source it has failed its responsibilities .

[rosndo]

> The bank not questioning the source of the money they deposit is the problem here

How do you know that the bank isn’t questioning the source of money?

In my experience these fancier banks tend to ask a whole lot of questions.

> Vladmir Putin is free to open an personal account in any bank. However if he is depositing millions and billions and the bank is not questioning the source it has failed its responsibilities .

Vladimir Putin could also have come up with paperwork showing that he got this money legally. If there are no obvious issues with the documentation provided, it’s simply not the banks problem.

[manquer]

> How do you know that the bank isn’t questioning the source of money?

How do you know they do ? The recent leaks, U.S. government position on Swiss banking laws and money laundering tells me they don't question too hard.

> In my experience these fancier banks tend to ask a whole lot of questions.

Are you High Net Worth Individual with 100's of millions of dollars in shady assets from a developing economy ? Otherwise your experience doesn't compare.

> Vladimir Putin could also have come up with paperwork

Vladimir Putin or any government official do not show the same sources of income and wealth in their home countries, if the income/ wealth declarations don't match to the money deposited the due diligence process is clearly not working.