Unfortunately this is true.
If you have had your account closed for being genuinely abusive then you certainly aren't going to put that in a newspaper article.
I DO think there is room for banks to abuse this, but I also think there other cases will be for a reason.
Money laundering doesn't necessarily have to be international. It can be low level crime or tax avoidance. Gambling is one of the more common ways to do it so it's no surprise to hear of people having accounts closed for it. Again someone laundering through gambling might express a grievance but are unlikely to also add if they are laundering. Some people are dishonest or deliberately withhold information for their own reasons.
This is definitely going to be a class issue to an extent in terms of hearing from people who have fallen foul.
What's lacking is oversight and a right to appeal in some of these cases. The lack of transparency is the troubling bit. However cos of the proceeds of crime tip off rule - banks CANNOT be completely open either. Criminals can't be let off and allowed to continue. An independent body might be the way forward with that
But it's worth stating that even Farage WAS offered a very basic limited service. He didn't like this though.
So I don't think it's as straightforward as saying no banking at all. There will be restricted options out there which don't expose banks to risk / abuse of staff in the same way.
What Farage does best is exploit grievance politics though. Often in more disaffected demographics - like those who might do a cash in hand. And yes these are the people most vulnerable to bank abuses of power but are also most likely to perhaps have also been caught out for dodgy behaviour of some kind.
We need a balance here which doesn't impinge on police work and allow criminal behaviour to flourish.
The 'tin foil argument' is a black and white argument which doesn't allow for nuance and assumes that all people caught out must be victims of the same deliberate power down control and abuse of power on poor helpless individuals.
The reality of this situation is there are multiple reasons why a bank might legitimately ban someone in line with legal requirements, people are not wholly honest about their conduct and then a minority who have genuinely been hard done by. You need to determine just how big this last group are and work out ways in which that can be dealt with better.
Simply going 'well Farage is onto something' to the exclusion of this just plain ignorant. It doesn't acknowledge that banks HAVE to carry out checks for our financial security and physical security. If they didn't they'd be rightly attacked for failing to do so and enabling criminal activity.
Laundering is the result of crime and funds crime. Terrorism often is linked to laundering. If the banks are exposed to too much risk they may collapse which has a huge impact on the whole of society. Laundering is often done through family members accounts not just a named individual.
This is one of those scenarios where the banks doing NOTHING wouldn't be an alternative either. They can not - for legitimate reasons - often disclose the reason for a decision to ban a customer.
A very basic limited base account should be universally available but this really won't satisfy the lifestyle of those used to having significant gains through criminal activity. As well as maybe introducing an independent appeal system which retains the right to uphold the bank's decision without disclosing why.