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Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters, corrupt politicians

theguardian.com

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

#61

Post by Youden »

kragen wrote: 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…

> So, if you've done nothing wrong but you don't want your banking details to be leaked for journalists in hostile countries to comb through looking for something they can pin on you, maybe Bitcoin would be a better alternative.

But with Bitcoin all transactions are public, journalists don't need a leak.

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

#62

Post by sofixa »

kragen wrote: 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…

> Moreover, almost all of the examples in the article seem to be cases of "ex-con nevertheless is able to open bank account". Isn't that a good thing? Do we want a criminal conviction to implicitly include a lifetime of exclusion from the financial system?

No, but extra due diligence is required when someone convicted of taking bribes or similar corruption or drug/human trafficking record opens a bank account with huge sums of money.

Or people like those:

* former head of intelligence and vice president of Egypt https://cdn.occrp.org/projects/suisse-secrets-interactive/en...

* https://cdn.occrp.org/projects/suisse-secrets-interactive/en... former wife of the current Kazakh dictator

Just to name a few. Their money is quite probably of dubious origin and the bank should have done better due diligence.

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

#63

Post by kragen »

sofixa wrote: post #62
kragen wrote: 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…

> Moreover, almost all of the examples in the article seem to be cases of "ex-con nevertheless is able to open bank account". Isn't that a good thing? Do we want a criminal conviction to implicitly include a lifetime of exclusion from the financial system? No, but extra due diligence is required when someone convicted of taking bribes or similar corruption or drug/human trafficking record opens a bank account with hu…

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?

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

#64

Post by blablabla123 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #23

> 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…

> There's no whistleblowers from the electricity company, even though it literally kept the lights on for murderers and traffickers

To play devil's advocate here, if those people completed their sentence and they are being resocialized they have access to what any regular citizen is supposed to access.

OTOH if they haven't been sentenced yet and the electricity company knows of it, I think they are walking on thin ice if they don't report it. I'm sure there are heavy sentences for keeping a blind eye on trafficking.

The other point worth mentioning when money laundering happens, tax evasion or even misappropriation of state money the bank is facilitating those crimes which really stands by itself.

So now I'm really wondering what the legit use case of the anonymous accounts is supposed to be.

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

#65

Post by kragen »

Youden wrote: post #61
kragen wrote: 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…

> So, if you've done nothing wrong but you don't want your banking details to be leaked for journalists in hostile countries to comb through looking for something they can pin on you, maybe Bitcoin would be a better alternative. But with Bitcoin all transactions are public, journalists don't need a leak.

Transactions, yes, and dates and amounts, but not names. And many "transactions" on the blockchain are within a single wallet.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when journalists start reporting on the immense data in the blockchain, but for whatever reason it hasn't happened yet. I don't think it'll happen as long as the "journalists" are the kind that think it's okay to publish an encryption key to a publicly available encrypted file of confidential data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cable...

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

#66

Post by [deleted] »

barry-cotter wrote: post #33
rich_sasha wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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

[deleted]

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

#67

Post by rich_sasha »

barry-cotter wrote: post #33
rich_sasha wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 suspicious, they should tip off authorities who can investigate etc.

At no point here can the bank judiciously freeze your assets. All this should mostly happen before the bank even touches your money.

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

#68

Post by Traster »

barry-cotter wrote: post #23

> 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…

Actually, to a certain extent, yes, the electricity company is going to report you if you're using too much electricity (this is how pot growers used to be caught), and yes, preventing traffickers from using legitimate banking is absolutely a standard practice, this is literally why money laundering is a thing. Also, if you are stupid enough to get caught money laundering (people will proposition strangers/(young stupid people) and say "cash this money, I'll give you 10%") you'll be blacklisted pretty damn quick - literally penniless teenagers give away their entire future to these scams.

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

#69

Post by Traster »

I'm honestly always amazed at people in these threads who say "Oh, well in general this is a public good, so we should be hands off". Sure, the default should be hands off, but if you have enough information to know what youre doing is wrong, you are responsible. It's one thing to say it's a public service, but if you know what you're doing is wrong, you know it's wrong,and in a lot of cases, a lot of effort is put into pretending that you don't know it's wrong even though you know it's wrong.

At the point where your own employees are risking their careers because they know it's wrong. Well... maybe only poor people have moral compasses.

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

#70

Post by lokalfarm »

missedthecue wrote: post #60
lokalfarm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use HTTPS? SSH? A password manager? Everyone has something to hide -- it is a matter of how much and from who(m). In our world of Big Data/surveillance capitalism, I don't see how you could even argue against stronger privacy rights...

I have SSH on my servers for the same reason I have locks on my house. Not because I have stuff to hide, but because having stuff stolen costs me money, and SSH and locks are an inexpensive way of preventing stuff of mine from being stolen

Sounds an awful lot like privacy:

1. the state of being apart from other people or concealed from their view; solitude; seclusion

2. the state of being free from unwanted or undue intrusion or disturbance in one's private life or affairs; freedom to be let alone

I don't draw a distinction between "your house" and "your data." Whatever your rational for having those barriers - that's your decision, right? Just because other people enjoy living on communes doesn't make it any less absurd for a country to outlaw locks on doors (or e2e chat apps...). Taken even further, people tend to do horrific things (sexual &/or domestic abuse) behind locked doors. But plenty of other people, like you & me, tend to sleep better behind them.

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