Money laundering

[PrettyCandles]

Say you walked into your bank with a wad of used £50 notes and wanted to deposit them in your account. At what point would the bank start worrying about money laundering, how much would trigger it, and what would happen?

And before you ask - I wish!

Bump?

th bank should not just accept a wad of cash full stop. How many £50's are we talking about, and WHY?

I don't work for a bank, but do work in a profession where money laundering is a big issue, and it's a case of "if it looks a bit weird, go and tell the risk and compliance people asap". If you don't, you risk being criminally implicated yourself. So it wouldn't take much for me to be ... And what would happen - the Spanish Inquisition... (sorry, I've got Michael Palin dancing around my imagination now. Better go to bed!!)

If anyone does work in a bank, and gives information on here about how money laundering is detected, they could land themselves in deep shit.

I don't work for a bank either, but know a fair but about AML. Tis a very interesting subject. I work in law and trust and the whole area is a huge issue

well, this is publicly available law society guidelines

Ok, there's nothing sinister or criminal about my question, and I'm not looking for trade secrets.

We have an elderly relative who gives us gifts of money for the dc. This relative is somewhat eccentric and generally gives us a handful of cash to spend on them.

We were just wondering, supposing they wanted to give us a large gift, at what point would banking such gifts become difficult? £500? £1000?

Its different for every bank but its usually at £7,500 plus

Also, even if your cash gifts went over their limit the most they are likely to require is that you give details of where you got the cash from. Not likely to stop you paying it in.

I had this when I was withdrawing large amounts of cash to pay builder - just had to state on a form what I was using the cash for, that was the end of it. They didn't ask for the name of the builder or anything.

My mum paid in an endowment cheque for us and had to state where we'd got it from (even though it said the name of the Assurance company on it).

well my Mum opened an account with me last week - with £2000 in "used £50s". Bank bloke just asked where it had come from and that was it. Last year she gave me £20k to put in my account (cheque, not cash!) and no-one raised an eyebrow or asked anything about it.

I work at a telephone bank. However, our customer can use a certain branch network to credit cheques and cash. We often receive calls from branches to advise that our customers have credited large amounts.

We review the account fully and look out for certain markers that would indicate money laundering. If we are suspicious we report it.

If the account is already in existence the UK regulations state that any payments in excess of £10k (the actual regulations state 15,000 Euros so dependent on exchange rate) need to be questioned. Money laundering issues are also likely to be flagged if you rarely make cash deposits but, eg, make 4 cash deposits amount to £12k over a short period.

This is not to say that banks wont ask with a lesser amonunt to ensure that their arses are covered.

When the bank account doesn't already exist you will have to go through the normal (now fairly restrictive) process of opening a bank account.

Basically they will be checking you are who you say you are. it is unlikely that they would suspect money laundering in these circs but if they do suspect then they can make a report to investigative agencies.