> 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...
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.
> 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.
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.
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".
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
> 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?
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 .
> 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.
is there any actual data about that or is it urban myth?
Onlyfans keeps identity documents for its members so trafficking-wise they are actually safer than facebook. there are all other businesses affected by the same discrimination, e.g. sex toy shops, dating websites, nudist websites, basically anything that shows skin. I find it hard to believe that chargebacks are so much of an issue, especially since there are third parties willing to take the risk for a high fee (CCbill).
Money, liquidity, and fungibility is a public good, it has been (and still is) a waste of public and private resources to attempt to alter that reality.
Although this isn't a popular or public opinion by the public or banks or politicians, it is also the reality for banks and their host governments, and all lip service otherwise is either a lie for data collection or simply fails spectacularly at actually preventing any flow of funds.
So, there isn't any point in saying "Credit Suisse is a rouge bank", because the whole idea of pretending to whitelist transactions and clients is flawed and useless. There isn't any point in saying "privacy laws are immoral" because it doesn't matter what anyone's background is, they can still access banking and pools of liquidity to move between assets and trade with others anyway.
Even the vague idea of avoiding terrorist financing is flawed. Terrorism isn't expensive enough for this whitelisting project. People aren't flying planes into buildings because they don't want to fly planes into buildings. Its not that expensive. Let's drop the charade and reduce overhead costs for everyone.
Congratulations, we've successfully stigmatized having money, except for the people that actually have it who ignored the cultural stigma and can afford better education and counsel on reality. Let's move on from this data mining and transaction whitelisting project.
> it doesn't matter what anyone's background is, they can still access banking and pools of liquidity to move between assets and trade with others anyway.
Julian Assange & Wikleaks had no access to the banking system because a US politician asked the banks to refuse them service at a time when they had not been charged with any crime.
Whenever you see someone you "dislike" being dealt with in an extradjudicial manner just keep in mind that these are your rights that now don't matter.
Right, correct, it should be illegal for the government to attempt leveraging financial intermediaries this way, even for people we don't like. Just like we don't cut the power off for people we don't like.
I'm convinced there's always going to be some new frontier for regulators to say "if we could just get rid of this, there'd be no more crime."
80s/90s: offshore banks, bearer shares
00s: MSBs/money orders/check cashers
10s: prepaid/gift cards, crypto, luxury real estate
Truth is that as long as you can triple your money bringing cocaine from Mexico to Texas people are gonna do it. If anything they've made it harder to track because instead of criminal proceeds just being deposited in a Miami bank account they're being used to buy cell phones for export to Colombia.
I believe KYC is a very good idea fundamentally, and I wish more banks took it seriously with their top customers as well (or more) as with the rest. It’s not in banks’ interests, of course.
And I disagree that terrorism is cheap. Preparation for 9/11 allegedly cost up to $500K. Bojinka plot used fair amount of financing as well. Maybe those couldn’t be caught via financial controls and KYC, or maybe they could.
Correct, I consider that cheap when HSBC subsequently laundered billions of dollars over the following decade after the PATRIOT Act. The same PATRIOT Act that wouldnt have flagged wire transfers the terrorists used even if it existed before 9/11. It's just an opportunistic data collection program on everyone else.
With billions slipping through from any random branch manager at any bank anywhere, how many 9/11s is that? Any time, for any reason, funding secured.
Expenses are interesting and add up rapidly (as any business owner knows)... 500k over two years for 20 people is only $1000/person/month and that has to account for all living expenses plus whatever else is required (flight training, cover identities, bribes, pay-for-play etc.)
This whistleblower is taking substantial personal risk. The Swiss banking secrecy laws provide for 5 year prison terms for people leaking client-sensitive information and when I worked on sensitive things in Switzerland I had to sign a document setting out the penalties and saying that I understood that I was personally liable and could (and probably would) receive jail time for disclosing anything.
The whistleblower could just as easily be an employee of the Russian ФСБ or the US NSA as an employee of Credit Suisse, in which case they wouldn't be at much personal risk.
I'm honestly always amazed at people in these threads who say "Oh, well in general this is a public good, so we should be hands off". Sure, the default should be hands off, but if you have enough information to know what youre doing is wrong, you are responsible. It's one thing to say it's a public service, but if you know what you're doing is wrong, you know it's wrong,and in a lot of cases, a lot of effort is put into pretending that you don't know it's wrong even though you know it's wrong.
At the point where your own employees are risking their careers because they know it's wrong. Well... maybe only poor people have moral compasses.
I commend the bravery of the leaker/whistleblower and hope they can maintain their personal safety. It's time to expose the evil amongst the elite--all the elite--once and for all.
Should it be limited to just elite or everyone all the way down? Not trolling you as it might sound but how do you draw lines between elite and not elite.
The elite seem to be able to scale the harm they do pretty well. I wouldn't be against focusing more resources on pursuing elite bad actors, but don't think there should be a minimum bad bar that must be surpassed to get prosecuted.
Once again the leaker went to Süddeutsche Zeitung [1] and left his/her/their documents there. Panama papers [2] and Paradise papers [3] started there as well. I'm really wondering why that is.
Readit News
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.
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
[1] https://twitter.com/OttawaPolice/status/1495367658132361216
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.
https://www.postandcourier.com/news/marijuana-bust-shines-li...
> 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.
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
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.
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?
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 .
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.
https://bitcoinist.com/allie-rae-onlyfans-x-crypto-crossover...
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28337834
Onlyfans keeps identity documents for its members so trafficking-wise they are actually safer than facebook. there are all other businesses affected by the same discrimination, e.g. sex toy shops, dating websites, nudist websites, basically anything that shows skin. I find it hard to believe that chargebacks are so much of an issue, especially since there are third parties willing to take the risk for a high fee (CCbill).
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Although this isn't a popular or public opinion by the public or banks or politicians, it is also the reality for banks and their host governments, and all lip service otherwise is either a lie for data collection or simply fails spectacularly at actually preventing any flow of funds.
So, there isn't any point in saying "Credit Suisse is a rouge bank", because the whole idea of pretending to whitelist transactions and clients is flawed and useless. There isn't any point in saying "privacy laws are immoral" because it doesn't matter what anyone's background is, they can still access banking and pools of liquidity to move between assets and trade with others anyway.
Even the vague idea of avoiding terrorist financing is flawed. Terrorism isn't expensive enough for this whitelisting project. People aren't flying planes into buildings because they don't want to fly planes into buildings. Its not that expensive. Let's drop the charade and reduce overhead costs for everyone.
Congratulations, we've successfully stigmatized having money, except for the people that actually have it who ignored the cultural stigma and can afford better education and counsel on reality. Let's move on from this data mining and transaction whitelisting project.
Julian Assange & Wikleaks had no access to the banking system because a US politician asked the banks to refuse them service at a time when they had not been charged with any crime.
Whenever you see someone you "dislike" being dealt with in an extradjudicial manner just keep in mind that these are your rights that now don't matter.
80s/90s: offshore banks, bearer shares
00s: MSBs/money orders/check cashers
10s: prepaid/gift cards, crypto, luxury real estate
Truth is that as long as you can triple your money bringing cocaine from Mexico to Texas people are gonna do it. If anything they've made it harder to track because instead of criminal proceeds just being deposited in a Miami bank account they're being used to buy cell phones for export to Colombia.
not regarding anonymity but in fungibility and capital formation, selling and trading the shares is on another level
And I disagree that terrorism is cheap. Preparation for 9/11 allegedly cost up to $500K. Bojinka plot used fair amount of financing as well. Maybe those couldn’t be caught via financial controls and KYC, or maybe they could.
With billions slipping through from any random branch manager at any bank anywhere, how many 9/11s is that? Any time, for any reason, funding secured.
At least the state can use anything leaked no matter how it was obtained against the banks and companies.
At the point where your own employees are risking their careers because they know it's wrong. Well... maybe only poor people have moral compasses.
Poor can't do that much impactful financial crime, can they
[1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Papers