Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

amai wrote: post #109

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, c…

> 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.

How is a democracy index put out by an organization legally binding? You are still asking to encode a qualitative judgement into law, which is difficult even in less democratic countries.

> because it would show that democratic values are more important than money.

For most people, democracy is the means to safety and security (and yes, money), not the other way around. Your plan would ironically make more sense in an autocracy where such ideology can be more easily implemented and enforced.

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

#112

Post by rich_sasha » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #104

tinalumfoil wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Neither is ram by banks, they are the recipients of regulation there, not creators.

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

#113

Post by rich_sasha » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 8:11 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #103

rich_sasha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disrupt…

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.

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

#114

Post by rich_sasha » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 8:19 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #100

rich_sasha wrote: post #96

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 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.

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

#115

Post by amai » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #111

amai wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, c…

> 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. How is a democracy index put out by an organization legally binding? You are still asking to encode a qualitative judgement into law, which is difficult even in less democratic countries. > because it w…

> You are still asking to encode a qualitative judgement into law, which is difficult even in less democratic countries.

I disagree. In pandemic times every democratic country had a list of safe and not-safe countries regarding traveling restrictions. I demand something similar for business restrictions.

> Your plan would ironically make more sense in an autocracy where such ideology can be more easily implemented and enforced.

Laws can better be enforced in Democracies, because usually laws are created so that they reflect the majority opinion and there is less corruption.

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

#116

Post by kragen » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 12:17 AM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #93

kragen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing in the article to suggest that they didn't do the due diligence; do you have access to some information about that that isn't in the article?

The whole article is about Credit Suisse's lack of due diligence, and the reason why the whistleblower blew the whistle. I find it impossible to believe that the former wife of an extremely corrupt politician in a kleptocracy just stumbled upon one million CHF in a casino.

That's what makes it so telling that the article contains no information whatsoever about what due diligence was or wasn't done and, with the exception of the unnamed cardinal, no suggestion that the accounts were used for any wrongdoing.

As for Nadezhda Tokayeva, who I think is who you are talking about, how much money do you think she should have? For 40 years she was married to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the most powerful man in Kazakhstan. Her maximum balance was 1.5 million CHF, barely enough to buy a house in San Francisco. That amounts to a savings rate of 40,000 CHF per year during that time, or 80,000 CHF per year during the 21 years after he first became Prime Minister. That hardly screams "looting the country"; even the president of the US gets paid several times that much officially, without even taking into account speaking engagements and the like.

Kazakhstan is indeed very corrupt, but what do you want banks to do about it? Refuse to service any Kazakh customers? Only service Kazakh customers who operate private businesses rather than working for the government—on the dubious theory that private Kazakh businesses are not corrupt?

This just sounds way too much like "you don't look like the kind of person who deserves that much money" to me.