Last week, the UN General Assembly adopted the UN Cybercrime Convention ā a global treaty to formalize the cooperation of law enforcement agencies between UN member states, that officially voids bank secrecy laws.
Here's what this means for you:
When other countries want to access your financial information for law enforcement investigations, they currently have two primary methods to rely on.
First, there's information sharing via the Egmont Group: a global consortium of Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), which allow countries to request financial data for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing investigations from other FIUs. A similar program already exists within the UN, called goAML ā a database to share financial information.
Data shared via the Egmont Group is highly confidential and for investigative purposes only, i.e. not allowed to be used in court.
To legally act on the information obtained, countries have mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs), which require law enforcement agencies to cooperate with each other for example in the seizure of assets.
Under the UK-US MLAT, if the UK receives a request by the US to freeze or seize a person's assets due to a money laundering investigation, the UK is required to oblige by the US' requests, and vice-versa.
In contrast, for example, the UK currently does not have an MLAT with China. While both are parties to the UN, and some cooperation agreements for UN member states already exist, the UK may currently tell China to fuck off if it requests the seizure of assets held in the UK.
The UN Cybercrime Convention essentially functions as a UN-wide MLAT. The only prerequisite to the Convention is that the crime a country requests assistance in is also a crime in the country it requests assistance from.
With the UN's Cybercrime Convention, China, and any other UN member state, may now request other countries to freeze, seize, and forfeit assets on behalf of the requesting country ā MLAT or not.
The Convention is now expected to be ratified by UN member states, and it's an absolute nightmare for the security of your funds, putting you at risk of asset seizures through authoritarian regimes ā no matter what country you are in.
https://www.therage.co/un-cybercrime-convention-bank-secrecy/
