Bail-In laws
There
are other ways as well, that Governments and the Banks can take your money. In 2018 the Liberal Federal Government with Labor
support passed Bail-In laws, so that a bank in financial strife can just
take your money. Currently there is probably no forseeable danger of that, but it has happened in other countries. Now the legal framework has been put in place so that it can happen here as well. Many have complained that the legislation is vague, meaning that the conditions for this to occur and the extent to which this can happen are not defined leaving those with the power, to do as they want, rather than what was originally intended.
Bank freezes your account
But your money is mostly safe, or is it? What if the Bank freezes all your
accounts? You can't access any of the money, there is no warning, and
there is either nothing you can do about it, or it is very difficult to do something about it, or to find out what can be done.
Could you live without access to any of your funds for one or two
months, or maybe never again?
It might not be the bank. It
might be Austrack that has frozen your account. There are numerous
reasons why that can occur and you do not have to have committed a crime. Recently one
unsuspecting person helping out flood victims was the victim of Austrac. While busy helping others, people gave him money so he
could fuel boats and trucks to do the work. Austrac deemed the lots of small donations as suspicious. No notice, no warning, he just woke up one morning not being unable
to access his bank accounts. Why? Here's an Austrac article that might illuminate.
Did he actually do anything wrong? No, they were just suspicious, and
at the time of writing this it's nearly a month and he still doesn't have access to his account or
his money. Here's an excerpt of what they say to look out from the Austrac article. Note that none
of these are a crime.
What to look out for
- Frequent ATM deposits from other people into a customer’s bank accounts.
- The customer depositing significant amounts of cash.
- Structuring of multiple cash deposits below A$10,000 to avoid reporting obligations.
- Transactions that are inconsistent with a customer’s profile.
What if you are subject to fraud?
What if you are subject to fraud? It's
a long story, too long for here, perhaps for another post. Persons unknown were writing
fraudulent checks for large sums of money on my bank account. The
cheques were clearly fraudulent, and the bank acknowledged it wasn't my fault, but the end result was my main business
account was unceremoniously frozen. I was the victim even though I was innocent. I had to set up other bank
accounts to continue my business. It wasn't fun.
Digital IDs and the rush towards Digital Currency?
Now the Federal Government is pursuing Digital IDs nd Digital Currency - in line with WEF policy. According to Government and the WEF it will streamline business, but it actually means more regulation, more control, tying everything down more rather than freeing things up. And of course one of the things that won't be freed up is banking and bank accounts with the aim of removing cash from our society.
Many have written about this:
