Working in a financial call centre, a certain type of person considered us to have stolen their money if they sent us an funds for an investment and refused to send anti-money laundering documents with it, because we also couldn’t return the money without them. Sorry, buddy.
Speaking for the UK, that’s every financial institution. The whole point is that everyone is required to complete checks to make sure you are who you say you are, if you refuse them then that is an indicator of money laundering. Even just receiving and returning money helps a money launderer establish a paper trail and assists in layering to legitimise the money they gave you. That’s a big no-no, obviously, so it can’t simply be returned without risking significant legal implications from the regulator. All expectations are set up front on this when beginning transactions.
If you have fixed desks, put a piece of sticky note over the laser on their mouse. That or use the monitor settings to rotate their screen 180 degrees when they aren’t around.
If you receive money without verification and return it no questions asked, then you are opening yourself up as an avenue by which people can launder money. Every receipt and retransfer of that money legitimises that money further and makes you party to the crime. The money is in limbo and can be returned as soon as the regulatory needs are met, but to do otherwise just voids the whole process.
At this point they are depriving themselves of the money by refusing to verify themselves, it’s a basic identify and address check. This is an investment company, they weren’t sending us their rent money, they wanted to invest it. They were just pissed that we expected them to follow the same process that every client needs to follow when investing.
Okay, do you work in the UK financial services industry, or an associated regulatory body? Because this was an infrequent circumstance that came as a result of the inattentiveness and belligerence of specific customers. There’s no industry wide issue and this was whilst working for one of the largest investment platforms in the UK.
If you don’t like how things work, then that’s fine, but it was working as intended and would have been no issue if the client had just followed the required, and explained, process. I feel it goes without saying that it is very important to maintain anti-money laundering processes in our financial systems, both legally and conceptually.
If I’m not asleep by a certain time of night, “hour of the wolf”, then I find it very hard to sleep without something in the background. Usually I use the sound of a babbling brook that I recorded while in Iceland.