| At the start of this year, I was in Cuba. While in Cuba, I opened my bank app to check my balance. Just that, not to make any transactions. I am a EU citizen. I only have EU bank accounts. The app I used was of a EU bank. There are no EU sanctions against Cuba at this time or at the time I was there. I also have no relation to the USA, I was never there or have business there. A few days after opening my bank app ( again, read only, no transaction ) I received a threatening email from my EU bank saying I might be in violation of sanctions and it is prohibited to use the bank in a list of jurisdictions ( basically the ones mentioned in the post minus the last thee ) and the bank reserves the right to terminate my account. As you can imagine, this was very concerning. Fortunately nothing came of it. But still, I find it ridiculous the bank threatened to close my account just for being in a country that, at least for the jurisdictions that concern me, is a normal country. I have no doubt this was an automated message. The only thing that prevented my bank account from being terminated was the suspicious activity flag triggered the email handler and not the delete account handler. I find this to be utterly dystopian. |
There are global trade and sanction contracts between USA and eu fyi and the financial sector is even more strongly regulated.