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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

#91

Post by psd1 »

csomar wrote: post #88
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 or unsavoury sources of funds. Who's "you"? The Bank? How does the bank "decide" whether the funds are legitimate or not? Be the judge, the executor and everything else in between? Am I crazy or this shit~ should have never been acceptable, in a sane world. ~: KYC/AML and what else.

False dichotomy. You're not crazy for having those principles. But you're thinking in terms of "little people" justice.

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

#92

Post by sdoering »

sschueller wrote: post #25
sdoering wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a cynic I would say you don't sell it (except maybe with the Russian situation) but just do it. Who should stop the US government from going forward with this? I know, I am a cynic. But I once was (young and naive) a member of the German social democrat party. I visited the state convention for their youth members. It was a perfect politics simulacrum. With decisions being made, backroom deals (because we don't…

Yes it's discusting how modern politics operate not in the interest of the population but in their own and their enablers (donors and powerful). The most obsurd is when soldiers are sent to fire weapons where each bullet costs more than they make in a year at another group of people that have even less for political reasons.

My SO always quotes (we both don't know the origin of the quote):

"In war people who don't know each other kill each other on command of people who know each other but don't kill each other."

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

#93

Post by sofixa »

kragen wrote: post #63
sofixa wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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.

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

#94

Post by vmception »

from wrote: post #73
vmception wrote: post #6

Money, liquidity, and fungibility is a public good, it has been (and still is) a waste of public and private resources to attempt to alter that reality. Although this isn't a popular or public opinion by the public or banks or politicians, it is also the reality for banks and their host governments, and all lip service otherwise is either a lie for data collection or simply fails spectacularly at actually preventing…

I'm convinced there's always going to be some new frontier for regulators to say "if we could just get rid of this, there'd be no more crime." 80s/90s: offshore banks, bearer shares 00s: MSBs/money orders/check cashers 10s: prepaid/gift cards, crypto, luxury real estate Truth is that as long as you can triple your money bringing cocaine from Mexico to Texas people are gonna do it. If anything they've made it harder t…

and crypto brings back bearer shares on steroids

not regarding anonymity but in fungibility and capital formation, selling and trading the shares is on another level

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

#95

Post by remarkEon »

vmh1928 wrote: post #83
remarkEon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shou…

Why post a link to an Ottawa Police tweet about looking for people actively involved in the civil unrest there? If there was an organized conspiracy by right-wing US crisis actors to create chaos and bring downtown Ottawa to a stop, is it overzealous for the police to look into it and any possible crimes committed?

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 about protests in Downtown Portland - protests which often devolved into violence and actual damage to businesses, something which hasn't happened at all in Ottawa.

So to answer your question, it's an example of where if you are protesting for the "wrong" thing, your finances are now threatened. Are people actually okay with this?

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

#96

Post by rich_sasha »

csomar wrote: post #88
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 or unsavoury sources of funds. Who's "you"? The Bank? How does the bank "decide" whether the funds are legitimate or not? Be the judge, the executor and everything else in between? Am I crazy or this shit~ should have never been acceptable, in a sane world. ~: KYC/AML and what else.

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 and say, I’m a lowly administrator in a country in the bottom decile of human development index, can you look after my $100m, the should definitely dig deeper. In such case, yes you should actually document where the money is coming from.

It shouldn’t be such a high burden of proof. Money doesn’t spontaneously appear like particle-antiparticle pairs. Maybe you sold something, or were paid for some services. You should be able to demonstrate that with ease.

Remember, the bank, other things being equal, wants your custom. So they’ll apply the lowest bar possible to make sure the money isn’t stolen, lest the regulators slap them hard.

With CS the issue was, they basically didn’t even do the bare minimum with any degree of honesty and integrity.

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

#97

Post by TomSwirly »

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…

> This article is a bit difficult to understand;

Perhaps better not to comment then, because it seems like you didn't actually understand it.

> with the non-crime of "a really bad person has a bank account"

Right off the bat, you are misrepresenting the legal issues involved, which were explained in the article.

The issue in each case was that a really bad person had a secret bank account with a huge amount of money which they could never have acquired legally.

For generations, Swiss banks allowed this, and of course every dictator, embezzler and money launderer took advantage of this.

But finally Switzerland legally prevented this - except Credit Suisse decided not to follow the laws.

IF you are going to continue with this, please familiarize yourself with the relevant laws, starting perhaps here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer

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

#98

Post by TomSwirly »

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

I am starting to believe now that you are deliberately misrepresenting the truth.

This has zero, nothing at all, to do with "guilty until proven innocent". Anonymous banking is simply not allowed anymore, because of literally trillions of dollars in crime money going through Switzerland. Now you are legally required to know your customer, even in Switzerland.

Forcing banks and customers to obey financial disclosure laws and punishing them if they break the law is how the law works.

If you or I walked into a bank with tens of millions of dollars in cash, we would be asked to show ID, and information about the deposit would be sent to the government because it's the law.

It strikes me that you just don't like the law and instead of saying that, you move the goalposts and pretend the law itself doesn't exist.

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

#99

Post by TomSwirly »

remarkEon wrote: post #95
vmh1928 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why post a link to an Ottawa Police tweet about looking for people actively involved in the civil unrest there? If there was an organized conspiracy by right-wing US crisis actors to create chaos and bring downtown Ottawa to a stop, is it overzealous for the police to look into it and any possible crimes committed?

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.

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

#100

Post by csomar »

rich_sasha wrote: post #96
csomar wrote: post #88

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. Who's "you"? The Bank? How does the bank "decide" whether the funds are legitimate or not? Be the judge, the executor and everything else in between? Am I crazy or this shit~ should have never been acceptable, in a sane world. ~: KYC/AML and what else.

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 transactions require a bank account. If KYC/AML is required, it should be done by the state (or the local government) itself and let the bank be, you know, a bank.

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