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Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

theguardian.com

41–50 of 116 posts

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

#41

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.

I hope we soon can get proper whistleblower law because right now companies get away with way too much crap. At least the state can use anything leaked no matter how it was obtained against the banks and companies.

My feeling is Switzerland shouldn't be allowed to do that much banking.

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

#44
post #32

Everybody likes defending the bank's right to bank with murderers, but god forbid they bank with a cam sex worker. https://bitcoinist.com/allie-rae-onlyfans-x-crypto-crossover...

Murderers don't disproportionately trigger chargebacks. We've had this discussion a lot in the past few years [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28337834

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

#45

> 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…

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 appropr…

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.

[1] https://twitter.com/OttawaPolice/status/1495367658132361216

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

#46
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.

[1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Papers

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

#47
post #24

Switzerland is all about Neutrality What's the point of neutrality if you are gonna ignore it when it's convenient. There's a reason Switzerland held Jewish and Nazi gold alike.

This country should be heavily sanctioned by the international community. They actively pull in (tax) fraudsters and criminals.

So, like Delaware?

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

#48
post #32

Everybody likes defending the bank's right to bank with murderers, but god forbid they bank with a cam sex worker. https://bitcoinist.com/allie-rae-onlyfans-x-crypto-crossover...

Murderers don't disproportionately trigger chargebacks. We've had this discussion a lot in the past few years [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28337834

[deleted]

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

#49
post #30
post #29

Another day, another answer to "what is Bitcoin good for?" Earlier today we were discussing the false-positive rate of Google Drive's copyright-scanning approach: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30404587 . What do you suppose the leaker's false-positive rate on "fraudsters and corrupt politicians" is? The article does admit this: > It is not illegal to have a Swiss account and the leak also contained data of leg…

This times 1000 if you have done things wrong and don't want journalists (or law enforcement) to find out

Or if you've done things right that you don't want law enforcement to find out about, such as funding a protest.

But this is all hypothetical; evidently only one of the 30,000 people swept up in this dragnet had done anything with their account that would merit such attention: the single example of the (oddly, unnamed) cardinal with his possibly fraudulent London real estate transaction.

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

#50
post #32

Everybody likes defending the bank's right to bank with murderers, but god forbid they bank with a cam sex worker. https://bitcoinist.com/allie-rae-onlyfans-x-crypto-crossover...

Murderers don't disproportionately trigger chargebacks. We've had this discussion a lot in the past few years [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28337834

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).

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