www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Simple answer D2864. USA PATRIOT Act. That is what created "Know Your Customer" a government mandate. U.S. Banks could have cared less who was depositing big chunks of cash in the grubby little hands until Uncle told them to cease and desist because we carry a big stick and will use it. They Uncle said that worked so well lets exported it to other countries using the same big stick tactic.

Do you really think Costa Rica bankers were any different then U.S. Bankers? They didn't care who were depositing big chunks of cash into there grubby little hands either. The big difference was CR had no Patriot act didn't need one. Government had reason or desire to bother the banks until Uncle stepped in and demanded they adopt "know your customer" or the cash stops flowing. Big stick, works almost all the time when the man with the cash is swinging it.

Just as an aside one does not have to have worked in any industry to have done some research and formed an opinion about that industry. However, if you feel that your knowledge of issues is confined to the industry you work so be it.

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Alex Levine

I agree with Irish Drifter. All of the “getting to know you” stuff can be traced directly back to the Patriot Act. Also, it is clear the US has direct relations with nearly banks all over the world. Panama, Ecuador and El Salvador are dollarized. That tie to the US Treasury is pretty tight. Under Abel Pacheco (2002-2006) there was a fairly substantial effort to dollarize Costa Rica.

The Patriot Act was written with the intent of combating terrorism including the funding of terrorism through the use of laundered money.

The Act conferred on the Secretary of the Treasury the legal authority to impose regulatory conditions and restrictions, on foreign nations, their financial institutions, and specific types of financial transactions involving foreign jurisdictions. (Source: Patriot Act, Title III, Subtitle A.)

The U.S. “Congress has been especially active in providing new authorities to fight a combined war against drugs and terror.” In so doing Congress granted “the Department of the Treasury [an] enhanced set of regulatory restrictions against foreign jurisdictions, foreign financial institutions, and certain classes of financial transactions involving foreign jurisdictions to combat money laundering.

Section 103.176(b)(2), allows for monitoring and reporting suspicious activity of the foreign bank customers of their respondent banks. (Source: CRS Report to Congress, 23 June 2008, “International Drug Control Policy.”)

31 CFR Part 103: Federal Register / Vol. 72, No. 153 / Thursday, August 9, 2007 / Rules and Regulations requires (Emphasis added on requires) foreign financial institutions to report suspicious activity involving any of their accounts to the extent they know, suspect, or have reason to suspect a violation of law or regulation, including suspicious activity attempted or conducted by, at, or through correspondent accounts they establish or maintain for respondent banks. Such activity may involve the respondent bank’s foreign bank customers. (See 31 U.S.C. 5318(g))

Comes now a little sugar in the form of financial aid. The Mérida Initiative is the massive plan to provide security in Mexico and Central America. It focuses on criminal gangs, sharing intelligence, professionalizing the police forces and cost guards through better training and equipment, and reforming their judicial systems.

Mexico received $500 million in FY 2008. The five traditional Central American nations plus Belize, Panama, the DR and Haiti split up $65 million in the first year. In 2010 the CA split is scheduled at $100 million. Nations always want a little help with one of the most expensive aspects of the budget. Want a little sugar, give me a little cooperation.

If you really want a treat, try to transfer more than $10,000 to CR and see all the forms you get to fill out. I had to provide “due diligence” documentation to show that the amount of my own money transferred from my US account to my Costa Rica account matched the estimated expenditure of the work being done on my house. I had to submit plans, contracts, and photos of the construction progress. If I refused, my CR bank would not accept the wire transfer from the US and I would not have received the funds.

true, this know you customer stuff can be traced back to the US, but what i'm saying is that "these days" even without the US pulling out the big stick, banks that don't have basic know your customer routines are putting themselves at risk and their customers. since 2001, internet banking both from the front-end that consumers see and from the back-end that businesses see are under attack and if you only know basic chit about your own customers but don't know what a typical transaction is like for each customer then may as well lock the doors, shut off the power, because a lot of money is going to be lost to international fraud rings. so when i said it has nothing to do with the US, it did at one point, but in the here and now, it doesn't. with the internet and the additional business channels it has created, the risks have never been greater.

when people begin to pay for chit with their smartphones, just another convenience for customers, but yet another risk to banks.


What I know about fraud rings and the millions of dollars they steal quarterly from just the bank that employees me is not in the newspaper.

True dat--what we do know is horrifying enough. In the papers this week was a multi-national LE taskforce FBI led that busted a mainly Eastern European ring that stole millions using a program called Zeus.

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"Amen, brother"-ED

do you have a workable link to the story

.........and so the saga continues. When I last posted I was making my 6th trip to the bank to finish this horror show by returning as instructed to sign documents. WRONG BOZO....they told me to go home and wait 3 days for a phone call to return to sign the docs. Well since yesterday was 11 days I decided to make another trip to finalizeall the bullshit and get it done. WRONG AGAIN gringo. The moron just snarled at me and told me that they were very busy and to not worry about it, and they would call me when the docs were done. I guess the natural progression would be that some cop will come to arrest me for not COMPLYING.

Thats what you get for going without the first born Ch*ld

Bob no worries about the cops... the bank told them how much plata you have

good luck on the next trip to bank..... bring a pen they may not have one

I truly believe you are right about that SR. And I am not a conspiracy theory person. Don't believe you exagerate about the depths of it either...