Money Laundering Regulation- Alliance & Leicester

CFC

mich_roh wrote:

I understand where your coming from, but what I put up was just an extreme hypotheses.

My question is how does stopping access to an internet account stop Money laundering ?

And i am not angry just frustrated as I had to spend around £50 -60 on phone calls to carry out the transactions which I could have done online. FYI HSBC UK current account and all my credit card accounts were accessible online.

That's exactly the thing that makes you angry. They make their own rule up, or the staff are badly trained and don't know the answer, so they trot out the Money Laundering Regulations. It's used as any old excuse for anything where the front line staff don't know the answer. It was used by Lloyds as a reason for my husband to be unable to open an 'ordinary' bank account instead of a basic account (as he was not english, clearly they didn't understand the regulations) and I had to get the British Bankers' Association involved to get them straightened out. They were all helpful after they'd had a call from them. The helpful person from the BBA said that this was not an unusual problem, that the bank just used the Money laundering regulations as reasons for nearly anything as they didn't understand them or implement them properly.

Gabriel-Ernest

We had a similar discussion a couple of weeks back - the AML regulations are 'broad,' the FSA is notorious for not giving straight guidance, and each financial institution is obliged to implement its own risk-based procedures in order to comply. Thus, this will vary between one financial institution and another.

seven-day-weekend

I have been able to access all my accounts online in Spain (LTSB, Co-Op, First Direct and Goldfish) with no problems whatsoever.

It didn't even enter my head that I might not be allowed to.

Off to look at Ts and Cs.......

mich_roh

Just a quick definition from Wikipedia

Money laundering, the metaphorical "cleaning of money" with regard to appearances in law, is the practice of engaging in specific financial transactions in order to conceal the identity, source and/or destination of money and is a main operation of underground economy.

My logging into my current bank account from anywhere in the world and using the options provided by the bank to transact on my account is in no way trying to conceal my identity source or destination of money as everything is logged with the bank.

If I had to conceal my identity why allow internet banking and phone banking even in the UK ?

mich_roh

Another quick definition from HM treasury - http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/D57/97/D579755E-BCDC-D4B3-19632628BD485787.pdf

Money laundering is a term usually used to describe the ways in which criminals
process illegal or “dirty” money derived from the proceeds of any illegal activity (e.g. the
proceeds of drug-dealing, human trafficking, fraud, theft or tax evasion) through a
succession of transfers and deals until the source of illegally acquired funds is obscured
and the money takes on the appearance of legitimate or “clean” funds or assets.

masonic

mich_roh wrote:

Actually funny you asked this as I am bit of a computer geek ... very sad n lonely but there you go ...

Port80 is used for www access everywhere in the world ... so if I had Port80 blocked through firewall on my computer I would not be able to get onto the internet in the first instance.

You could type in port 80 in google and gets loads of info ... :eek:

Port 80 is not used for TLS (https) connections - it's port 443. But A&L do actively block connections coming in from certain places - I checked this out using some proxy servers.

masonic

mich_roh wrote:

If I had to conceal my identity why allow internet banking and phone banking even in the UK ?

As has been said above, only A&L know the answer to 'why?'. They have probably done some sort of risk assessment and decided it wasn't worth them opening themselves up to certain problems associated with the places they have blocked access.

mich_roh

I could have easily accessed the website through UK proxy servers to get access to my account from India.

Not a very clever idea to stop criminals who are into money laundering ...

Oh and thnx for the info I have learned another thing today Port443 for https...

thesaint

mich_roch,

I think that has been established that A&L have sold you a dummy with regards to the Anti money laundering regulations.

mich_roh

I have emailed back to AANDL with more questions ... i will keep this updated ..