GDPR madness

[Energize]

It could be worse, you could've been stopped by the police for a random check on the way back from drawing out a rather sizeable lump of cash and then have them 'steal' it because they didn't believe you'd be able to withdraw that amount, despite you having a receipt from the bank in the same bag and on top of the cash. So rather than simply believing him and phoning the bank in question to sort it out in minutes, they decide to 'steal' the money under the proceeds of crime act and then arrest you on suspicion of money laundering.

Happened to the Father of friend of mine. He'd arranged with the bank beforehand to withdraw such a hefty sum (£75k) and had to travel to a large branch to actually pick the money up, it was on his way back from that branch that the fun started. Even when it was finally sorted out the next day it took him ages to get the cash back.

Yeah the proceeds of crime act is basically guilty until proven innocent.

 

[BYTEr]

I was a compliance officer for a conveyancers until last month and one of my jobs was to sign off the client due diligence part of a clients file, specifically the proof of funds to comply with the AML regs. Our standard policy was to ask for 3 months' bank statements if the money was acquired through savings, if you're using a donor, we treated them just like a client and therefore required all the standard client due diligence documentation, eg; proof of identity, address, credit checks and source of funds.

We often had clients or the donors whinging about providing this, but this is comply with the goverment AML regulations and different firms will accept different things.

I quite often asked for more than 3 months' worth too, especially if the amount accrued seems to have been accumulated over some time.

By the way, if you're worried about giving too many details about daily spending etc, we allowed clients/donors to redact information, so we'd allow them to redact all other purchases, as long as we saw salary/wages going into the account and any transfers (for example going into a savings account) and keeping names/account numbers visible.