NatWest Current Account closed - please help!

Adviceneeded

Hi, if anyone can help, I'm very desperate!

So my story begins, 2 weeks ago I received €10,000 (around £8,000) into my Natwest current account. The money was owed to my Partner for months of unpaid freelance work. Instead of my Partner receiving the money, we decided it would be sent to my account as the rent and bills leave my account and we were 2 months overdue on rent (due to the fact he hadn't been paid). The person who sent the money, sent it from their personal account in France. I paid my bills and 2 days later i tried to check my online balance and could not login. I called Natwest who put me through to their fraud department who told me that they had received a SWIFT message saying that the funds sent to my account were fraudulent and they started asking questions about who sent the money, and when I explained the situation, they started asking how long i'd been with my partner etc. I was told that if this was a mistake, I needed to contact the person who had sent the money and they needed to get their bank to send another SWIFT message to Natwest explaining there had been a mistake and the payments weren't fraudulent. This all happened on Friday afternoon.

On Monday, the person who had sent the money told me his bank was closed in France so I needed to tell Natwest that the SWIFT would be sent on Tuesday. I decided to wait until Tuesday to let Natwest know - but on Tuesday his bank in France (LCL) said that they had not sent the original fraud message, they had not been notified of any fraud and it must have been an intermediary bank, so due to this, they were not able to send a SWIFT to Natwest. I phoned Natwest and explained the situation and was told that either way, my account was now closed. I asked what happened to the funds in my account and was told that they were being held and would be returned to the sender (to date the funds have still not been returned!). I was also told that a letter would be sent out to confirm this. My salary was to be paid to me that Friday and I was told that I could access that at a bank branch. When I went to my branch, I was given about £200 out of my £2050 pay......I was told that since my account was now closed, I was in credit for my £2000 overdraft and I had been charged a £6 daily fee and this is what was remaining. On a side note, I had moved £250 of the transfer to my savings account, which was effectively mine (but taken to cover part of the overdraft) - so if I had been involved in fraud, why wouldn't I have taken all the money out as cash or moved it all to my savings account???

Anyway, so the situation now is that I have still not received any information concerning my account, I have no bank account, I cannot open an account (I tried opening an account with halifax and was told to check my credit report as I was turned down), all my cash has been taken my Natwest, either being held or used to pay my overdraft (and its 1 month to Xmas to not exactly the best time for me!) but I was told to provide full information to the Natwest Concerns Team if I felt there had been a mistake - which I have now done, covering every details, even the origin of the money in the French account, proving that no fraud could have occurred.

The company I work for offer legal advice so I spoke to a lawyer briefly and they told me that I need to follow Natwest complaint procedure and if I don't get the right result I need to contact the Ombudsman. I suggested going to the police but they told me that unless a crime has been committed, the police will not investigate. That's all fine but all of this takes time and I'm in a very desperate situation. Luckily the person sending the money has been very helpful and has been very open with his finances, so I can't see any case of fraud (also if fraud had occurred, why has his account not been closed or investigated, why just mine?).

Should I hire a lawyer? Going to the County court has been suggested, but how do I do this? Any advice, please let me know (and sorry for the long long message). Also, if this helps, I've been with Natwest for 7 years - and never ever had any problems.

pmduk

I suggest you follow the legal advice you have already received. ie use the formal complaints procedure. Until you have sorted this matter out, you will have problems getting a bank account as I suspect a CIFAS marker may have been placed on your record.

On what grounds could you go to the county court? If the bank suspects money-laundering then they have every right to close your account.

alanq

NatWest has form.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15794539
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18540832

BBC Radio 4's Money Box may be interested. See message boxes at the bottom of the linked pages.

Agricolae

Natwest should know which bank sent the SWIFT message advising the funds were fraudulent.

Adviceneeded

Thank you for the Money Box suggestion - I was thinking about contacting them, but thought I would ask on this website first.

I've tried phoning Natwest Fraud team again today for information, but they will not explain anything. The money still has not been sent back to the sender, and his bank have not received any notifications about fraud, so when I asked where the money is now, all they told me was that it's dealt with by another department, but there is no way I can contact them... I asked them, how can I appeal this properly when no one will give me information as to how or why this has happened or who has even accused me of receiving fraudulent transfers, and again, they refuse to give me any information. If I am involved in fraud, why haven't they contacted the police? Nothing makes any sense.

I still have not received anything in writing, I just cannot believe that banks operate like this. I understand that if they've been notified of fraud, they need to action that, but unless I'm being directly accused of fraud, why are they allowed to withhold information, which will help me clear this? I'm extremely frustrated about this as the one time of year that you need money, I've had all of mine taken away!

In the mean time, I suppose the only way to get a response is to make some noise....so if the Money Box program are able to offer some advice then this is my only route.

Thank you again for everyone's responses.

stclair

Raise a complaint following the banks complaint procedure.

https://www.natwest.com/global/contact-us/complain.ashx

https://www.natwest.com/Downloads/global_options/complaints_leaflet.pdf

If you do not get a satisfactory response within 8 weeks you can then escalate it to the FOS.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumer/complaints.htm

Adviceneeded

I will do.

Thank you for your advice. It's greatly appreciated!

alanq

Bank talks woman into opening several accounts each for specific purpose and then flags her as a suspected money launderer for opening several accounts in one day.

The bank? NatWest. There seems to be a pattern emerging!

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-2246643/I-branded-criminal-How-targeted-fraudster-unscrupulous-banks.html

alanq

Today's BBC Radio 4's Money Box revisits the issue of banks closing accounts without apparent reason.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bps1y
Start 4m20s in.

stclair

alanq wrote: »

Today's BBC Radio 4's Money Box revisits the issue of banks closing accounts without apparent reason.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bps1y
Start 4m20s in.

Or is it because your ethnic?!

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24285885

Lith

Seems to be a lot of 'threads' about accounts closing... so unjustified... the banks close the wrong accounts but keep open the real bad accounts i would suspect....