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Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

theguardian.com

101–110 of 116 posts

Re: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

#101
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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 transactio…

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

Re: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

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 suspi…

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.

Re: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

#104
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 a…

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

Re: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abou…

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.

So protesting is a crime now?

Re: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

#106
post #40

It's this sort of thing that gives me (even more) confidence that pretty much every government conspiracy or at least the more incredulous claims (eg aliens and UFOs) are false. Such systems would rely on humans and humans tend to be really bad at keeping secrets or they simply have a crisis of conscience and release things they technically shouldn't as is the case here. Look at the Manhattan project. utmost secrecy.…

...Never before have I expected to hear anyone calling the person who proliferated nuclear secrets "principled".

Differences of opinion aside, you severely underestimate the character/circumstances/motives/number of "conscientious objectors" in society.

Re: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

#107
Democratic Switzerland should at least force its bank to only make business with customers from democratic countries. By doing that they would avoid a huge number of highly problematic customers. So basically only make business with countries which have a score of 6.0 or higher in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Components

Re: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

#108
post #107

Democratic Switzerland should at least force its bank to only make business with customers from democratic countries. By doing that they would avoid a huge number of highly problematic customers. So basically only make business with countries which have a score of 6.0 or higher in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Components

Doing so would require a vote from all the Swiss (as any real democracy would require), and a successful vote would block them from doing business with customers from almost all other countries (as they wouldn’t qualify as real democracies by Swiss standards).

I’m not sure how such a referendum would be written, but surely it wouldn’t pass (Swiss are fairly conservative in regards to money and business).

Re: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

#109
post #107

Democratic Switzerland should at least force its bank to only make business with customers from democratic countries. By doing that they would avoid a huge number of highly problematic customers. So basically only make business with countries which have a score of 6.0 or higher in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Components

Doing so would require a vote from all the Swiss (as any real democracy would require), and a successful vote would block them from doing business with customers from almost all other countries (as they wouldn’t qualify as real democracies by Swiss standards). I’m not sure how such a referendum would be written, but surely it wouldn’t pass (Swiss are fairly conservative in regards to money and business).

I didn't say they should restrict business to countries most similar to Switzerland. There are 75 countries on the democracy index that are called democratic. I believe doing business with 75 countries should be more than enough for small Switzerland. This would free Switzerland from the accusation of hypocrisy, because at the moment it is democratic itself, but profiting a lot from money coming from authoritarian, corrupt regimes and even outright dictatorships.

P.S.: Actually the restriction of business to the 75 democratic countries in the world should be the rule in every democratic country, because it would show that democratic values are more important than money.

Re: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abou…

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.

>>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.

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