Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–127 of 127 posts

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#121

Post by usrusr »

nostalgk wrote: post #87
delinka wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea, presumably, is that the "finder's fee" is money paid to the bank for finding money laundering, and that fee outweighs the profits from the transactions themselves. "Fees" are not levied against an institution, "fines" are. And in that light, yes, fines are indeed too low to thwart a failure to identify the correct transactions.

Ah, I see. You mean to say that the governing body concerned with money laundering would pay the financial institution. I was under the impression the finder's fee would be attributed to the employee, by the financial institution (a silly thought on my end). Of course, it all wraps back around; the bank would need to have some sort of incentive to lobby for this, and given that they are potentially making money hand…

> I was under the impression the finder's fee would be attributed to the employee, by the financial institution

Sorry for being too ambiguous, "it all wraps around" on my end as well.

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#123

Post by usrusr »

nostalgk wrote: post #88
usrusr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are mandated to do flagging, but cannot be forced to be good at it. An incentive would not necessarily make them better at it, but it would still add rewards to all the cases they do find, despite all the squinting and bugs and carefully assigning the lowest performers to the task.

I'd imagine the fee would need to be at least a bit more rewarding than the current punishment is punishing.

As I wrote in the second paragraph ("cynicism level a bit darker"), it would be impossible for rewards to outbid transaction fees anyways, because the latter can be inflated in plausibly deniable cooperation between launderer and bank: slap on some bogus insurance, the 24 hours on call special and that outrageously expensive package that would in theory allow to summon a clerk being flown out to your yacht. All understood, on both sides, to be specifically designed to increase transaction fees to make turning a blind eye worthwhile. Money launderers know everything about reading and writing between the lines, it's basically their job.

Banks would still just catch the small fish who shop around for the lowest rates like a regular person. In the end, sibling comments about snakes and hazards are right.

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#124

Post by repolfx »

rconti wrote: post #102
repolfx wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, are the Germans the new Russians then? Sounds like having failed to pin a dozen or so different crimes on Trump now his enemies are trying to harass his banks in retaliation for working with him? A classic strategy. Any bank can be found guilty of money laundering if the authorities want because the wording of the laws are so vague.

If you're interested, this dates back decades, and Deutsche Bank has been implicated in a lot of money laundering over the years. If you're interested, there was a great podcast on the president's reliance on Deutsche Bank overlooking his never-ending bankruptcies and refusal to pay back loans, when no other bank would touch him. https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2019/05/09/721726619/... If you're not interested…

I'm interested but I've also read a lot about money laundering over the years, and I know you could easily say "Barclays has been implicated in a lot of money laundering" or "HSBC has been" or "JP Morgan has been". Every bank has been rapped repeatedly because the laws boil down to "don't let criminals use banking services", which is an incredibly hard problem. Maybe Deutsche has a worse problem than other banks, I'm not sure, I'd want to see figures. But having seen how tightly linked AML is with politics, I'll reserve judgement on Trump and Deutsche.

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#125

Post by username444 »

woah wrote: post #114
brmgb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are almost no incentives for us to flag transactions on our own (unless we're being super humanitarian) I like how you frame avoiding profiting from crime not only as being humanitarian but actually as being super humanitarian. To be honest, I find your comment quite frightening. I think bankers viewing being honest as a humanitarian act is in and of itself a much larger problem than faulty software.

Why do we still allow people to use cash? How much humanitarian good could we do by banning it once and for all? Gold is also a potent laundering tool, it can be re melted at a low temperature. It’s shocking that it’s still allowed.

I still use cash for entirely legitimate daily transactions, and for the same reason criminals use cash. Same goes with Bitcoin and cryptography.

I don't need banks monitoring and selling my purchase history to their "affiliates", like insurance companies, so that they can build shadow profiles.

Maybe I'm buying vegan groceries, getting wheat grass enemas and giving my money to the poor. Or maybe I'm spending it on McDonald's, hookers and blow. Either way, it's nobody's business but my own.

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#126

Post by fareesh »

notfromhere wrote: post #109
fareesh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is my point - the report's conclusion contradicts a very large number of headlines and stories that the news media spoke of in near-factual terms. We are now in a place where nothing he did impacted the outcome - since the investigation concluded unimpeded, but the fact that he tried is now a new reason to go after him. This is what I am referring to in my original comment about the quality of journalism and it…

You missed the part where he would have been charged with obstruction of justice were he not the president.

The investigation was completed though, so nothing was obstructed. The media went from:

he colluded

he didn't collude but he obstructed

he didn't obstruct but he wanted to

That's the point being made here - the media is not doing its due diligence and is generally engaging in predicting the future or misrepresenting facts.

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#127

Post by craftoman »

I remember similar answer was given from a bunch of corrupted employees after the Greek state found that their anti-corruption algorithms (written in Python btw) stopped reporting for incidents. In the end, after the inspection from major supervisors found that those guys working at the post over there "accidentally disabled" the reporting service and blamed the software.
Post reply on HN