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Money Laundering and AML Compliance

bitsaboutmoney.com

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Re: Money Laundering and AML Compliance

#91

Post by baybal2 »

super256 wrote: post #84
pyuser583 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a really great book called Kleptopia by T. Burgis. It’s about how wealthy oligarchs use the Western legal and banking systems. He points out that the US financial system is squeaky clean. Oligarchs wind up in prison because they think they can pull the crap in New York that they pull in London. But outside the financial sector it’s the 100% opposite. Americas permissive corporate transparency lets assets vani…

The USA is the only economically significant country that opts out of participating in the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) data exchange. The USA claim that FACTA is enough. This puts the USA in the unique position where it only receives information from other countries through FACTA and its IGAs, without providing any information in return. Why doesn't it provide information in return? Well, only specific bank accou…

[dead]

Re: Money Laundering and AML Compliance

#92

Post by btilly »

notch898a wrote: post #68
btilly wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the government DIDN'T impose it. Whatever the bank's procedures may be, the regulator can say with a straight face, "We didn't tell them to implement those procedures, and we didn't tell them to take those actions. That was their decision." And, unbelievable as it may seem, the government won't be exactly wrong either.

I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that the KYC laws as written don't impose the requirement to search papers to verify proof of identity, address, etc. Sure cute games can be made about the semantics of it, but that's why we have human beings as judges. It's blatantly obvious that when you threaten to toss someone in a cage for not doing something that you are imposing that on them, it's not voluntary…

Actually the laws as written DON'T impose any such requirement. Banks generally choose to implement policies that do that, but it is not required. And during COVID, many banks changed those policies.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/kyc-and-aml-beyond-th... goes into this. The primary concern for regulators is that you must have made statements to the bank that you can later be put in jail for lying about. And the bank must have approved procedures in place for identifying when transactions are high enough risk to decide to take verification steps.

On your comments about judges, you apparently have substantially more confidence in the common sense applied by the legal system than I do. Don't forget we now have a Supreme Court judge (Amy Barrett) who is on record, in a legal paper no less, saying that fiat money and the Fed are obviously unconstitutional, and judges should handle that by simply avoiding ever considering the question. (Read https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1304/ if you think I'm making that up.)

Does this sound like an excess of common sense?

Re: Money Laundering and AML Compliance

#93

Post by datavirtue »

Nowhere these articles written by chatGPT? If an editor were involved the articles would be about a paragraph each or they they would have been put through the shredder.

I have been in the industry for years. The author said nothing enlightening or important.

Re: Money Laundering and AML Compliance

#94

Post by ghayes »

wcunning wrote: post #15

The best thing I've read on this topic is from Matt Levine at Bloomberg, restated in his newsletter on Wednesday: "In general, the chief compliance officer at any company has a dial in front of her that she can turn to get More Crime or Less Crime, and at a normal company — a bank, for instance — her job consists of (1) turning it most of the way toward Less Crime, but (2) not all the way, and (3) acting very contrit…

The referenced article: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-05/coinde...

Re: Money Laundering and AML Compliance

#95

Post by wpietri »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #62
pyuser583 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a really great book called Kleptopia by T. Burgis. It’s about how wealthy oligarchs use the Western legal and banking systems. He points out that the US financial system is squeaky clean. Oligarchs wind up in prison because they think they can pull the crap in New York that they pull in London. But outside the financial sector it’s the 100% opposite. Americas permissive corporate transparency lets assets vani…

> The best example: if you want to get a mortgage to buy a house you have submit to a financial strip search. But if you want to buy a house with bags of cash, you don’t even need to give your name. What is this an example of? You are submitting a financial strip search because the lender wants to ensure the borrower can pay the debt, not to ensure they are a criminal or not. And that is because prior to 2008, lender…

If you want to deposit that same cash in a bank, it's going to raise questions. Real estate is a bit of an exception here. For reasons explained in the article.

Re: Money Laundering and AML Compliance

#96

Post by wpietri »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #83
irusensei wrote: post #4

It is expensive to keep a crime and corruption department on your banking institution. If you are dealing with a millionaire who is related to some oil mogul in Russia you can do your due diligence and Vladimirovich can hire a team of accountants to prove that his business is legit and not at all related to the corporativist oligarchy his uncle runs. Or it might be, but the risk vs reward is good enough to turn a bli…

I know I'm expressing a minority opinion on this, but I'd much rather have an unregulated system where I was able to send and receive money without any sort of hassle or oversight, even if criminals and people frowned upon by the people who run SWIFT are able to do the same.

That will seem swell to you until better-funded criminals want a piece of your assets, money, or labor. There are very good societal reasons to keep crime to a manageable level.

Re: Money Laundering and AML Compliance

#97

Post by wpietri »

josephcsible wrote: post #27
cmeacham98 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common with offshore online casinos: you can deposit and lose your money, but as soon as you try to withdraw winnings the KYC rolls out and you better hope you're not a US citizen because you weren't even supposed to sign up in the first place then.

Why is "if you gambled but we found out you weren't allowed to gamble, we'll take back your winnings but not give back your losses" legal? Shouldn't it have to be either "we'll reset everything back to before you gambled" or "everything you already did stands; you just can't do anymore (and are probably in trouble)"?

Presumably for the same reason you can't call the police if an illegal drug deal goes bad. [1]

[1] Which, yes, actually happens. E.g.: https://www.wect.com/story/22122424/man-calls-911-to-report-...

Re: Money Laundering and AML Compliance

#99

Post by notch898a »

btilly wrote: post #92
notch898a wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that the KYC laws as written don't impose the requirement to search papers to verify proof of identity, address, etc. Sure cute games can be made about the semantics of it, but that's why we have human beings as judges. It's blatantly obvious that when you threaten to toss someone in a cage for not doing something that you are imposing that on them, it's not voluntary…

Actually the laws as written DON'T impose any such requirement. Banks generally choose to implement policies that do that, but it is not required. And during COVID, many banks changed those policies. https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/kyc-and-aml-beyond-th... goes into this. The primary concern for regulators is that you must have made statements to the bank that you can later be put in jail for lying about. And…

The letter of the law not explicitly saying "search their ID paperwork" does not mean it's not an imposition created by government. The "written" text seldom is a good indication of what is actually imposed. For instance, for a period of time a shoe lace was considered a machine gun [0]. You would never realize it unless you looked at the documented directives/interpretation of regulators.

If the practical imposition placed on you by regulators is that you in practice are needing to search paperwork to satisfy KYC, that's a government imposed requirement no matter what the actual law says.

[0] https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2010/01/25/shoestring-mach...

Re: Money Laundering and AML Compliance

#100

Post by datavirtue »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #62
pyuser583 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a really great book called Kleptopia by T. Burgis. It’s about how wealthy oligarchs use the Western legal and banking systems. He points out that the US financial system is squeaky clean. Oligarchs wind up in prison because they think they can pull the crap in New York that they pull in London. But outside the financial sector it’s the 100% opposite. Americas permissive corporate transparency lets assets vani…

> The best example: if you want to get a mortgage to buy a house you have submit to a financial strip search. But if you want to buy a house with bags of cash, you don’t even need to give your name. What is this an example of? You are submitting a financial strip search because the lender wants to ensure the borrower can pay the debt, not to ensure they are a criminal or not. And that is because prior to 2008, lender…

Zero underwriting? You obviously do not know what you are talking about.

I got a "no-doc" non-conforming FHA loan back then. They fucking strip searched me. It was not easy--I still have PTSD from it. That same loan is still available on the market.

You also need a citation on your reason for the financial crisis of 2008.

I had to walk away from my home BECAUSE of the financial crisis (after having paid down 90% of the principle). Was it triggered by defaults or the credit default swaps themselves? Sure, maybe some bad loans were floated,but the sophisticated, hot off of the regulation preventing it, people in New York started gambling on the plebs losing their homes. Well, a few plebs (really, over-leveraged affluent people) lost their homes, and a cascading effect of credit default swaps came due and spun out of control. The crisis was directly caused by Bill Clinton signing a bill that removed key regulation that would prevent the very thing that happened: Gambling on Wall Street.

So STFU.

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