Monzo Bank getting a kicking on 'Watchdog'

I have accounts with quite a few of the "app only" banks, some of them with quite a substantial amount of money in them and with reasonably large sums going in and out
(Primarily to meet pay in criteria for other accounts)
I have had absolutely no problems at all.
I don't know if I have just been lucky, or if some of the people complaining about having accounts frozen are using them for less than legitimate purposes.

colsten wrote: »

Banks are legally prohibited from giving any information on ongoing investigations.

brianposter wrote: »

Maybe they should be visibly trying to get the law changed, as it seems to be clear that their interpretation of this particular part of the law does not function sensibly.

Because if the acccount is frozen because of say suspected, lets say money laundering or proceeds from crime, if Mr Biggs phones up Marcus or whoever and says "My account has been frozen, why?" and the response is "We think you're profiteering from selling drugs", what do you think Mr Biggs is going to do if he is selling drugs? He's going to go on the run and hide and maybe empty another bank account he owns before that gets frozen too. Tipping Mr Biggs off could be construed as perverting the course of justice on the part of the bank.

Banks can be fined severely if they are found to be too lax and facilitating money laundering. When they freeze accounts and submit a Suspicious Activity Report to the National Crime Agency (NCA), they have to wait up to 7 days for further instruction. If instructed to keep the account frozen, they then have to wait up to another 31 days for further instruction. Then it is either reopened, closed with funds returned or the police will seize the funds.

From the first report to the NCA, it is illegal for them to tell the customer why their account has been frozen. It's also illegal to unfreeze the account until the NCA say so or don't bother responding within those deadlines.

No, it isn't very nice if you've done nothing wrong and sometimes there are false positives. But caution is what the law requires. So Monzo, or any bank for that matter don't deserve to be chastised for that. I don't get why the BBC has picked on Monzo when every single bank does this.

The second anti money laundering departments relax their flags, that floodgate for money launderers opens just that bit wider. I attended a talk on financial crime the other week and the stuff money laundering is linked to is horrendous - AML staff were getting emotional even talking about it as they aren't necessarily hardened to the concept of these things.

Now there are other financial institutions out there where the staff working in anti money laundering are irresponsible. I've known them to make up lies in reports to the NCA to frame unusual, but legal activity as money laundering. Where if they just report the facts without embellishment, the NCA wouldn't be interested. They're the ones who deserve to be exposed on Watchdog!