Banks are expected to be on the lookout for a lot of things their customers shouldn’t be doing, at least not through their bank accounts. Money laundering, for example, or bilking sovereign wealth funds of billions of dollars, or serving sellers of that evil and still very-much-illegal-on-the-federal-level weed, uh, weed. Now, they’ve got to keep an eye out for an equally sinister and immoral action: supporting democracy.
Bankers at Credit Suisse Group AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, Julius Baer Gruppe AG and UBS Group AG, among others, are broadening scrutiny under their programs that screen clients for political and government ties and subjecting them to additional diligence requirements, these people said.
The designation, called politically exposed persons, can make it more difficult or altogether prevent people from accessing banking services, depending on what the bank finds about the person’s source of wealth or financial transactions.