Wednesday, 5 July 2023

Laughing at Farrage Debanking Misses the Point.

 It seems the Anti-Farrage twitterati are having a field day making smug remarks about his debanking.

Insults range from "It couldn't happen to a more deserving bloke" to "Farrage is lying".

But to make light of the issue misses the point. People, ordinary people, are being debanked for arbitrary reasons.

For instance on the BlackBeltBarrister Youtube channel, he recounts a client of his who was debanked for no other reason that receiving money. The kicker was that the bank demanded to know where the money came from. The explanation that the money came from a friend that sold some furniture on their behalf wasn't good enough for the bank, so they debanked BBB's client. With no explanation as to what triggered the chain of events, with no explanation the client couldn't avoid the same issue arising in the future. Also they were put on a blacklist so that they were denied the option to open bank accounts at other alternative banks.

It's not just happening to people because they hold certain political views. It's just if you trigger certain rules the banks have. 

The problem being no-one knows what those rules are, in which case they don't know how to avoid falling foul of the triggers that would end up in the bank calling you asking to know where the funds came from.

There have been a number of instances where people have been debanked for "irregular" payments. It could be something as simple as getting payment from TikTok or OnlyFans. An OnlyFans account holder was debanked. Another person was elf-employed and worked mostly in cash and deposited a Sum of money. 

Apparently if you trigger the banks rules, they will call you and ask where the funds came from. If you don't satisfy the questioning of the person at the bank, then you'll be debanked and blacklisted.

When I was in business the money laundering rules started to come into play and I couldn't pay my accountant's fees in cash because they would have to confirm where the money came from. Even though there was an invoice and a payment of £600, cash would have rung alarm bells even back then.

Of course, if you do it all digitally, there is a trail of sorts. But even then because somebody couldn't possibly just send you some money, you have to have proof. What is acceptable proof to the bank is also not clear. Is a written invoice proof? For instance if you sold a car for a large amount and someone pinged you the money, how would you prove it was for the car? I mean prove beyond all doubt? 

What if they just lent you the money because they were a good friend?

So at some point, someone will fall foul of these rules. Until the rules are clear and made public, there is no way to avoid them.