Customers are getting caught up as banks de-risk due to money laundering laws

Well, we let them write undemocratic laws for security reasons because "terrorism". It's our fault.

Indeed. I think it would be helpful if our society could have some forum that would make an officially recognised determination of whether someone suspected of criminal activity had actually committed those criminal acts, based on the available evidence either way, on a case by case basis. That same forum would also be well placed to determine any temporary measures that were necessary and proportionate to protect the interests of all concerned until it reached its final decision.

I don't think commercial service providers are likely to be a good choice for that forum, though. We should probably consider something else.

It's a direct result of the regulatory and reputational risks that banks now face. Threatened with multi-billion dollar fines for facilitating money laundering they're not taking any chances.

It's not just the UK. This is happening in the US too.

> without a criminal standard of evidence.

That might have to go hand in hand with similar time scales and costs of the legal system. Imagine the delay and cost if this had been handled in court. Mr Rahman would still be waiting for a court date and paying an expensive solicitor to prepare his case.

This is the same with laws like no education for illegal immigrant.

Outside any humane argument, technically the schools are not equipped to determine the legal status of every child parents. Even outside any malicious application (which is by itself a wide opened door) it becomes a forced legal discrimination: the school cannot afford to take risk on children in case they lose their government allowance if his parents are found illegal.

>>“Customers making and receiving genuine transactions have absolutely nothing to fear,” a [Barclays] spokesperson says.

the problem with this statement is exactly the same as with the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" argument. What if you get flagged up as a terrorist in some database somewhere, because you sent an email to a friend from Iran that you met at uni? Suddenly, your entire life is turned upside down, and there's no easy way to fix it. But hey, if you have nothing to hide, you wouldn't have this problem, right??? /s

> and how the big, automated systems used by those businesses make no allowances for the human consequences when they make mistakes.

From experience, nor do the wage slaves simply enforcing the 'rules' as dictated by their employers.

If the purpose behind is is to get the government to force banks to responsibly handle money ... you forget it's the government that requires these rules in the first place. Barclays obviously carries the biggest part of the blame, but when consulting for a bank, we were constantly reminded that there are EU regulations stating that any transaction above 10.000 euros is to be automatically flagged and reported, and if such a transaction is "unusual" (yes that's what the government rule says), it is to be blocked, along with all other transactions on the account, until evidence is provided that the transaction was (a) legitimate (b) not made with the purpose of evading tax. Note that the owner of the blocked account needs to prove the tax department has no issues (for instance a letter stating no outstanding debts).

If Barclays is anything like my local banks, it sucks, but chances are they're not doing this just to spite their customers.

Since that job I carry 1000 euros in cash in my wallet, and never again shall I have a single bank account again. I managed to have a third account in a separate country last year under a not-identical name (if you're married in the EU chances are you have the right to use any combination of yours and your spouses names, including both of them with or without a dash in between).

I think the law is the problem. First, banks should not be held responsible for wrong doings by their customers. (think if hosting companies were responsible for the content their customers publish).

Second, the law gives them power without a recourse. This is because the law makes them responsible in case one of their customers were laundering money.

I know people who have had the same experience (e.g. having to prove their identity on multiple occasions.) Mentioning the words "Bob Diamond" seemed to be the most efficient way to resolve the issue.

Link/Source?

Precisely, if your money is in a bank, the government controls it. We need to bring back the gold standard ASAP.

It's not just that - their normal fraud checks are also pretty useless and a nuisance.

For years I regularly had Barclays block my card for things like buying the same plane tickets to fly see my family that I've done every year for more than a decade, from the same airline, to paying for groceries from the same online merchant I've paid for groceries at roughly the same amount every week for a couple of years.

The one instance I've had of fraud, on the other hand, their system didn't catch at all:

Someone paid two credit card bills of 4k each at a bank I've never before transferred money to, for accounts not in my name. I very rarely make big transfers, and certainly have never in my life paid money to a card account not in my name. You'd think that would have set off some red flags and the usual automated call telling me my card has been blocked until I confirm some transactions over the phone. But no.

Now, they were quick to take action and moved the money back into my account near immediately (with a stern warning that if I didn't sign the relevant documents in time to confirm what I had stated to them, the money would be taken back) so I wasn't inconvenienced that much. But having regular, routine payments being blocked semi-regularly while two unusually large transactions to a bank I never transfer to went straight through without additional check made me question what the point of their fraud checks is.

Unfortunately, even going and seeing your bank in person is no guarantee of getting sensible results.

I've been told I've failed an identity check while on a call from a branch, when that call had been started by a member of staff from that branch who had identified themselves and was standing next to me at the time, while I was in possession of more photo ID and proof of current address than I've ever needed to open any account in my life. And all that member of staff could do afterwards was apologize and share a half-hearted laugh with me as I left.

This happened while signing up for a new service, and ironically I was in the branch in the first place because I'd been unable to answer a security question on a call from my own phone. That was because the only two answers I was allowed to choose were both obviously incorrect, because the subject of that question was also the reason for my call, but again the person on the phone apparently wasn't allowed to accept that and continue.

I went to my bank in person to tell them I was going abroad for some time - gave them dates, locations, etc. The rep put a note on my account, but it was still frozen due to suspicious activity. I could only reopen it by visiting a branch in person. That was 10 years ago.

The article says that he did go and see them in person, several times, and that the bank gave him conflicting incorrect advice and sent him to different departments.

Have you ever had an incident with a bank where you thought "damn, I wish I would have warned them earlier"? Has this advice worked for you? Has it worked for anyone?

In my experience, they do what they want.

Another anecdotal data point with a different UK bank: Recently an acquaintance has found themselves frequently locked out of their account because (according to their fraud team) someone is failing authentication challenges on the phone. My acquaintance has had to visit a branch multiple times to verify their identity and get passwords changed.

So even though someone can't prove who they are, they're locking my acquaintance out. How's that fair?

The kicker was one phone call where (after having discovered the account was locked... again...) the fraud team on the phone sounded incredulous, asking why we hadn't gone in to branch like they asked "last night"? Less than 30 seconds later they noticed last night's call was marked suspicious... that authentication failed... and that that phone call had triggered the lock the account.

The worst part is that no "human" will take your case on. They read from a script and aren't allowed to empathise. No "I'm really sorry, I can see why you're upset" or even "If what you're saying is true, I wouldn't be happy either."

The one time I've had to do a large SWIFT transaction it was in person at the branch, written out on a little piece of paper .. and seemingly lost the moment I stepped out of the branch. Simply vanished with no record of ever having been attempted. Had to do it again a few days later.

Error is everywhere. The important thing is how people and systems detect, assign and recover from it.

If Bitcoin succeeds, out totalitarian governments will find a way to control it.

There is no longer any banking secrecy, no telephone secrecy, and there won't be computing secrecy if the civil servant parasites fear that their pensions are at stake.

That enables you to lose the £440k instantly and with no recourse instead.

yeah, because we can introduce a max cap of 5 transactions/second. Sounds like a great idea :/

Bitcoin isn't the answer. Sane banks with good laws, however are.

Note that, unlike anything the guy in the article did, what you're suggesting actually is illegal. He at least got his money back eventually because he was demonstrably 100% above-board. If you get caught structuring transactions to avoid scrutiny - and your strategy is probably not nearly as sophisticated as you think - then you will not be so lucky. Do not try this.

That my friend is called factoring, and that too is illegal and they have algos to detect that as well.