Orwellian

Indian in US? Your Account is Now Under Delhi Surveillance

"Thousands of Indian citizens in the US – from IT workers, health professionals, students and everyone else under the sun – will soon be innocent victims to snooping by the Indian government. If an Indian citizen holds a bank account in the US, minute details about his/her bank account will be shared with New Delhi by Washington. Although India gets access only to bank account information of Indian citizens, the US can get access to even information of 'non-US entities' operating in India if it has even one American working for them. That means information about any Indian corporation or organisation would be provided to Washington on request, if it has an American on rolls." Continue reading →

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Feds to return $107K they seized from NC business owner

"McLellan is just one of thousands of Americans the IRS has seized money from, supposedly for 'structuring' funds to avoid a law requiring banks to alert the government of deposits over $10,000. The law was instituted to help the government ferret out drug dealers, terrorists or other criminals -- but the IRS occasionally flags deposits of just under $10,000 as suspicious even if there's no evident criminal wrongdoing, in turn ensnaring people who may be innocent. That's what allegedly happened in McLellan's case. His convenience store in North Carolina was raided in October by IRS agents who said he made a series of just-under-$10,000 deposits in a 24-hour period." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFeds to return $107K they seized from NC business owner

Hospitals profiling patients using their credit card purchase data

If this story didn’t have a Bloomberg byline, I would swear it was from last night’s edition of The Daily Show. Hospitals are now buying consumer purchasing data to figure out who smokes, who has a car, and who shops at Walmart or Whole Foods. The idea is to identify high-risk patients and help them choose a different path before it’s too late. Does anyone remember Snowden? Does anyone still think big institutions can manage enormous sets of data carefully and ethically? What are the chances that the bottom line will win out over individuals? Continue reading →

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U.S. Regulators Mull Yanking Access To USD As Punishment For Banks

"BNP Paribas is expected to plead guilty in the coming weeks to charges that it processed payments for companies and countries that were subject to United States sanctions. BNP Paribas is also expected to pay financial penalties of about $8 billion, which would leave a sizable, though manageable, dent on its balance sheet. Despite those potential punishments, some regulators want to do more. Specifically, Benjamin M. Lawsky, New York State’s top financial regulator, is considering whether to temporarily suspend BNP Paribas’s ability to process dollar payments, according to people briefed on the settlement talks." Continue reading →

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Here’s One Fight Uncle Sam Can’t Win

"Economic citizenship programs are proliferating. That’s something to celebrate. These programs are a bracing antidote to the increasing tendency of governments to impose travel restrictions against their citizens, using passports as weapons. This has long been the policy of authoritarian governments like North Korea and China. But in recent years, the US and UK have made much greater use of passport revocations and even involuntary loss of citizenship against persons they perceive as 'enemies of the state.' Is it really surprising that a market has arisen to deal with these draconian restrictions on one of humanity’s most basic rights, the right to leave one’s own country?" Continue reading →

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U.S. tax deal jeopardizes Canadians’ privacy

"Imperils the privacy of up to a million Canadians and creates a two-tier level of citizenship in this country, discriminating against citizens based on their ethnic origin. It could include so-called border babies, Canadians whose mothers gave birth across the border for medical reasons; Canadians who have returned after holding green cards for work in the U.S.; Canadian snowbirds who could be deemed 'U.S. persons' based on the length of their stay in the sun; and Canadians born to a U.S. parent who may have never set foot in the U.S. If you are a Canadian holding a joint account with a U.S.-born spouse, your financial information, too, could be headed to the files of the IRS — and perhaps beyond." Continue reading →

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The Shocking Real Reason for FATCA, and What Comes Next

"The central planners at the G20 and OECD devised what they call a new 'global standard' of automatic financial information exchange between governments (i.e., GATCA) modeled on the US’s FATCA. However, GATCA would have never been possible in the first place had the US not cleared the path with FATCA. The G20 and OECD needed the US—the sole financial superpower (for now at least)—to strong-arm and cram down the throats of the rest of the world this privacy-killing measure. There’s no other entity on the planet with the capability to do so. The very big stick the US wielded was access to the US financial system and the world’s premier reserve currency." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe Shocking Real Reason for FATCA, and What Comes Next

DOJ’s ‘Operation Choke Point’ Closing Legal Websites’ Bank Accounts

"Under 'Operation Choke Point,' the DOJ and its allies are going after legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuring banks to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. The very premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it's own politically biased moral judgements. Targeted business categories so far have included payday lenders, ammunition sales, dating services, purveyors of drug paraphernalia, and online gambling sites." Continue reading →

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Does Anti-Money-Laundering Work? Rick McDonell of FATF Answers

"Can you put in place effectively a system that identifies who is sending what to whom? In terms of virtual currencies that remains the same. [..] One significant issue is identification of the beneficial ownership of trusts, entities and companies, the ability of criminals to hide behind a corporate veil or some other legal instrument. That is a challenge we are dealing with. We have a new standard in place for that, and it will be tested in practice very shortly. That will require much closer cooperation between different arms of government that haven’t perhaps had to work together before. I would put that down as a significant challenge going forward." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDoes Anti-Money-Laundering Work? Rick McDonell of FATF Answers

Alleged Silk Road founder: If Bitcoin isn’t money, how did I launder it?

"Ross Ulbricht, who stands accused of running the Silk Road black market under the name 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' says that new federal bitcoin laws make the charges against him invalid. In a filing over the weekend, Ulbricht's lawyers defended him against charges of hacking, narcotics trafficking, operating a criminal conspiracy, and money laundering. The first three charges, his lawyers argue, are 'unconstitutionally broad' and can't be applied to the normal operation of a website, even one whose business is illegal goods. And the last charge, they say, makes no sense if there isn't actual money involved — a possibility implied by a recent IRS decision." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingAlleged Silk Road founder: If Bitcoin isn’t money, how did I launder it?