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Do banks actually verify the residency document?

Paul Tudor Jones

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Jan 18, 2023
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SCENARIO: You lived in a certain country for a 5+ years, have paid all taxes there.
You left the country and notified the authorities you left.

You still have the ID card of that country and use it to open new bank accounts. You have all the address proof, bank statements with your previous address etc.

Do banks actually verify with the local authorities if you are still a resident?
 
Depends on where you were resident.
I was resident in a tax haven, and moved to a different tax haven. Both jurisdictions are very lenient/relaxed/lazy and don't care about what foreigners are doing.

Depends on what you mean by verify
By verify I mean: will the bank contact my stated residency country to ask if I am still a resident? Or am I just being paranoid.
 
I was resident in a tax haven, and moved to a different tax haven. Both jurisdictions are very lenient/relaxed/lazy and don't care about what foreigners are doing.

By verify I mean: will the bank contact my stated residency country to ask if I am still a resident? Or am I just being paranoid.
Very unlikely anything can be done to independently verify your previous residence.

Try it yourself: call the local municipality/police, pretend to be a bank and ask if you or person x live there.
Or if you're a bank, you send an API call to a service provider which may be able to access various types of population registers (full or limited), and return different amounts of data, from a yes/no to full name and address. Or they may not be able to access anything. It's highly location dependent.
 
No, they can’t.
Indeed banks generally can't verify your address.

There are special cases though, like Sweden (and I presume the other Nordics) where you don't change your address at Banks, and nobody would ever ask you for a utility bill as a proof of address. Instead you change your address in the government managed population registry, and then the Banks automatically get your new address from this registry.

So you could keep your address in Sweden in this registry, but then you'd be a tax resident in Sweden, and nobody wants that of course!

Or you put an address abroad in this registry, and that's fine, because you can live anywhere in the world and still keep a Swedish bank account.
 
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They won't do that in normal cases. But we learned from the forum that some people experiencieng things in their live that 90% don't.
 
In the EU it is forbidden by privacy laws. Refinitive/WorldCheck is a rubbish collection of open source, non verified information, basically a glorified and expensive Google.
My brother lives in Spain. His residency is in Spain, and his citizenship is Spanish only.

He was speeding at 120 km/h in Eastern France near the Italian border and 2 weeks later France sent him a Fine to his home in Spain. How France would know my brother information and that he's a resident of Spain?

Within the EU they know everything about you...
 
My brother lives in Spain. His residency is in Spain, and his citizenship is Spanish only.

He was speeding at 120 km/h in Eastern France near the Italian border and 2 weeks later France sent him a Fine to his home in Spain. How France would know my brother information and that he's a resident of Spain?

Within the EU they know everything about you...
State authorities of course have access to private information. Banks don’t.
 
My brother lives in Spain. His residency is in Spain, and his citizenship is Spanish only.

He was speeding at 120 km/h in Eastern France near the Italian border and 2 weeks later France sent him a Fine to his home in Spain. How France would know my brother information and that he's a resident of Spain?

Within the EU they now everything about you...
Well hes registered in Spain under his address and they have the number plate, so they just send it to the address, which in many eu countries is open info for all or in same cases only for govs.
It also works with official fines which are being auto forwarded across eu.
 
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You've got nothing to worry, just be careful with the IP address and country that you're logging from if it's not your country of residency (although it's easy to login from the moon and appear that you're in your country of residency using Meshnet VPN.)
 
My brother lives in Spain. His residency is in Spain, and his citizenship is Spanish only.

He was speeding at 120 km/h in Eastern France near the Italian border and 2 weeks later France sent him a Fine to his home in Spain. How France would know my brother information and that he's a resident of Spain?

Within the EU they know everything about you...
EU countries cooperate and share information for law enforcement and road safety purposes
 
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EU countries cooperate and share information for law enforcement and road safety purposes

I was driving my son's car in Spain (recently my son had moved to London) the cops pulled me over and said:
"Recently you swapped your Spanish drivers license for the UK drivers license."
I said "that wasn't me, that was my oldest son, and what is the problem?"
And then he said something very stupid...
"I didn't recognize who was driving the car having the mask on" as he was walking away...
I said "what mask, I'm not wearing a mask, and how would you know what my son looks like anyway?

The cop didn't answer my question, he said "you're free to go" as he continued walking to his car.
 
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