AML laws - weapons of mass-distraction?

[Don]

AML laws - are they really helping to reduce money laundering? It feels at times that they might do more harm than good.
Sometimes I suspect that there might be something far more sinister behind that - like good old hunger for power and control.
https://www.cityam.com/even-farage-...ndering-laws-are-weapons-of-mass-distraction/
Today there are powers which can cut off effectively anyone from the financial system with the press of a button. Heck, it applies even to someone as important as the PM of Hong Kong.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/30/business/hong-kong-carrie-lam-cash-intl-hnk/index.html
At the same time, ain't that ironic how one of the dirtiest holes from money laundering perspective becomes the host for AML authority in the EU. In that light it appears as a political weapon.
https://fintelegram.com/irony-strik...ring-watchdog-amid-germanys-tarnished-record/
And finally a philosophical question: what is money laundering? If money laundering is laundering of criminal proceeds, from which perspective we should look at it if it happens cross-border. Financial institution could be in one while the counterparties of the transaction reside in 3rd countries.
Something that is crime in one jurisdiction might not be so in the other.

E.g., In the context of supporting homosexual behaviour in Saudi Arabia where its a crime, if individuals or organizations provide financial support to LGBTQ+ individuals or groups in violation of the country's laws, authorities may interpret this as money laundering. For example, if funds are funneled through illegal channels or disguised as legitimate transactions to support LGBTQ+ activities in Saudi Arabia, this could be seen as a form of money laundering to conceal the source and true purpose of the money, while in another jurisdiction its seen as heroic act for supporting human rights.

Thoughts? Are you a believer and supporter of AML regulations the way they are now. Do you think the world is a better place now compared to decades ago?

 

[wellington]

US, London, Germany/Belgium are the heart of laundering.

Always have been... especially the US...

The word laundering (money laundering) has been so watered down over the past few years so it can be used for extraterritorial jurisdiction, or for political persecution, or regulatory persecution that its become so distorted.

In addition, '$,EURO, GBP are not money' but currency, there is only tier 1 money is Gold.

 

[JackAlabama]

Im in favor of completely abolishing all aml laws and most of kyc regulation too (except some sort of id eventually if I need or want to know who i am dealing with).

The aml ruleset does not help obviously to achieve what it was introduced for (the war on drugs), that war is completely lost.
It also very obviously does not help to combat any sort of other crime, since otherwise, everyone could observe crime meaningfully going to 0, which is not the case at all. So here again, it seems to be complete useless set of regulation just helping to bother mostly innocent people.

i come to the conclusion ml is anyway a made up/ arbitrary "crime" masked as control frenzy and should not be taken serious at all.
Thinking it thru ml causes no harm either. The harm is caused at the primary crime and not by just moving money around. Also just stacking it on top of other crimes by default is a joke. It is also undoing common legal practice which assumes guilt must be proven and not innocence must be proven be the accused.

Resources should be focused on the primary sources of crime (which are pretty effective, way more effective than this aml ruleset) and by creating fruitful economic conditions to help reduce all sorts of crimes too.

 

[Sols]

Source: Anti-money-laundering is a joke

 

[wellington]

I look at AML laws as more of a Stasi / KGB like data archive of citizens.

It reminds me of Asian based visa renewals (all the paperwork) - or reporting - which provides a footpath of the resident and their usual footsteps.

When you consider all of the digital data collated and all of the financial data collated you then have a strong data point viewing of a individual.

This is why the Russians / East Germans had paper archives of just about every citizen inside their state especially with outwards business interests.

Something to lean on or charge at a relevant time in the future.

 

[sebastian]

AML laws - are they really helping to reduce money laundering? It feels at times that they might do more harm than good.

They are invented to remove cash from the market and to govern and control the population in each country until they have no influence over their own lives.

 

[wellington]

Naturally it’s done under the idea of anti terrorism namely then secondary things.

But spying on one’s citizens (creatively called something else - patriot act for example - aptly named snoopers charter in the UK) under the guise of anti terrorism is laughable at best.

Some 3000 people died in the twin towers which eventually led to 3.5 trillion in expenditure in wars that failed, and some 15,000 dead, 2m non citizens dead and ~ 20m displaced.

And their own citizens accepting a surveillance state.

Seems like a kinda stupid deal, would have been better to have just mourned the dead and moved on after arms length bombing campaigns

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Seems like a kinda stupid deal, would have been better to have just mourned the dead and moved on after arms length bombing campaigns

What they did well is to delete all derivatives trading data immediately pre and post 9/11. The data I can find today is not what I was watching real-time back then.

 

[jafo]

View attachment 6291

Source: Anti-money-laundering is a joke

Thank you @Sols

This is a GREAT read! Thank you for sharing!

I've been saying this for over 2 decades. I even posted a video on this last year in August here: How banks freeze accounts - video explanation


It's ALL about stifling competition! "The government" has NEVER EVER done anything or implemented ANY laws for our benefit.

masked as control frenzy

100%!!!

Resources should be focused on the primary sources of crime

Crimes should be based on Mala in Se crimes *or* involuntary "transactions".
(1) Mala in Se crimes =

(2) Involuntary transactions are e.g. I send products to a buyer and he then refuses to pay instead of returning the products or paying for them.

Another great example that I had to make some of my earlier Chinese suppliers feel in their skin in the late 90s: Do NOT sell subpar products, products I did NOT agree to, or products I never ordered.

How did I accomplish this? That's a funny story but it's best left for another time. Needless to say, NONE of those suppliers (19 of them) ever spoke to me after that brilliant night in Hong Kong
I was literally called: "The White Devil" (Gweilo in Chinese)

View attachment 6291

Source: Anti-money-laundering is a joke

In another one of his articles, Littrell wrote this:

This guy surreptitiously kicked governments in the scrotum *and* managed to call the private sector a "sheep/slave" in a single paragraph

That's impressive AF!

 

[wellington]

They are invented to remove cash from the market and to govern and control the population in each country until they have no influence over their own lives.

See the thing is throughout history when a government pushes the people too far and generates too many construct laws the people push back and the government collapses.

Think this happened in Nigeria when they rolled out the CBDC.

It’s the people that determine what is a medium of exchange, a store of value etc

In Europe they have a perfect solution as it stands - barely any youth and the elderly want their retirement funds so don’t want to rock the boat, the youth can’t push back and just accept.

But outside of the West specifically peaked demographic countries - all but India, China when the Governments come up with something - the people push back - seeing that in Thailand with the socialist vote buying 10,000 baht wallet the plebs in mass push back as they realise it’s debasement, it’s also surveillance, you see this often where a “idea” is floated and the masses then make their voices heard and the idea ceases to exist.

In India the masses struggle as the harsh realities of the so called democratic gov come down on them harshly - as my Indian friends say - we are reported as a democracy but reality is we don’t have much say.

In China well we know China isn’t a democracy.

The US is loosing probably its largest % in recorded history in youth as they exit the US for better standards of living overseas.

I don’t particularly like Americans but I’ve never seen so many move to Europe, Africa, South America and Asia as I’ve observed since Covid.

That’s an economic brain drain that will hit them at some point and was driven by debasement, taxes, politics, being pushed too far.

For the UK there’s something like 3m reported but closer to 5m that have left the UK for opportunities elsewhere.

This is because the UK only really counts the elderly moving into the europzone and we don’t do any reporting but drop off after so many years of non voting.

In the Eurozone the youth have been migrating everywhere in the world for years…

 

[wellington]

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-bangladesh-land-minister-uk-property/

 

[koohl]

What they did well is to delete all derivatives trading data immediately pre and post 9/11. The data I can find today is not what I was watching real-time back then.

Any examples of such, curious to make my own investigation and research on that topic ?

See the thing is throughout history when a government pushes the people too far and generates too many construct laws the people push back and the government collapses.

I doubt the US or Europe to Collapse, but something bad may happen.

 

[Don]

How come in such cases it never comes under consideration of the regulators to revoke license and close down the business? Like it happens so easily with smaller banks or EMI-s, but big boys in the game pay the fine and life goes on.

https://www.enzuzo.com/blog/biggest-compliance-fines

 

[koohl]

If you're going to do something criminal as a large corporation, you have to do it on a huge scale, look at the banking system in Hong Kong and in other countries, do it big and you get away with it.

 

[blockchain4ever]

This is such a bad take. Of course any savings will be in the biggest denomination. If $100 notes are removed, then I will save in $50 notes.

And OF COURSE you do not see the bills used for savings when paying. Why would you? Does this dude know the difference between a means of exchange and store of value? This is 5th grader stuff.

It's like some dude thinking "oh, the criminals now have to carry two bags of cash instead of one! that will cripple them!!"

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Any examples of such, curious to make my own investigation and research on that topic ?

look at the open interests of options on airlines and insurance companies, also the volumes of SP.

 

[Rotor]

Funny how the more indebted a nation becomes the more stringent its KYC/ AML laws are. Must be a coincidence.

 

[wellington]

Velocity of money is one of the most dangerous things for a empire - the last time it dropped this low something like 5 empires ceased to exist.

These AML laws and international distrust coupled with liquidity drain have all but frozen most flow of funds worldwide outside of commercial interests of western companies - there isn’t one person in Asia I’ve met that says transfers are easy even down to those resident on some form of pension payment - friction has risen everywhere.

The blow back could still be working through the systems.

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Velocity of money is one of the most dangerous things for a empire - the last time it dropped this low something like 5 empires ceased to exist.

the btc empire is rising

 

[GPT]

The concept of Money Laundering was invented by the USA to fund all sorts of "black" projects. It went out of control for them when law abiding citizens started to use the same techniques. Ever since, they have tried to put the cat back in to the bag. The last 35-40 years every 5-ish years new regulations have been implemented to get to where we are now.

In several countries it is now clear that the last 5 years of measures is too much. Will AML/CT legislation be reversed? I personally dont think so.