Discussion

Palantir extends reach into British state as it gets access to sensitive FCA data

Oarch: As a Brit, I've never had the sense the UK (specifically the City of London) has any genuine interest in tackling money laundering. I suspect our economy is structurally reliant upon us being extremely good at it.

joe_mamba: Isn't the whole point of the City of London, to be a legal money laundering economic zone?

themafia: > Palantir has previously defended its work, saying it has led to about 99,000 extra operations being scheduled in the NHSNo hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.> helped UK police tackle domestic violenceAnd precisely how was this done?> Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contractContractual obligations that are not practically enforceable will not be honored. I don't think these individual administrative agencies have the acumen necessary to correctly negotiate these contracts.

remarkEon: >And precisely how was this done?Can't find the article atm, but it was basically pre-crime from Minority Report (without the pre-cogs, obviously). They looked at large datasets and built a predictive model, correlating things like race and prior criminal history to infer who was more likely to re-offend. At scale, this works. Ethical issues abound, however.

therobots927: Alex Karp will be held accountable eventually. I can’t think of anyone more evil than that rat fucker

crimsoneer: What's he done that's so evil...?

themafia: > At scale, this works.We're going to need a definition of "works." The false positive rate seems to be notable since those stories readily percolate into media whenever these schemes are implemented and the damage done from those is absolutely massive.The idea that criminals are likely to re-offend is not new. What to do about this has always been the challenge. Simply over policing this segment is not any type of solution. Unless, of course, you are invested in the "private prison" industry.

Lio: Really? What are you basing that on?Having worked at FinTechs and in finance in general that doesn't ring true at all. The FCA definitely takes anti-money laundering checks quite seriously.e.g. (off the top of my head) NatWest were fined £264 million for AML breaches.I'm no expert by any means but if I wanted to flout the rules I'd definitely consider a few other juristictions before the City.

londons_explore: [delayed]

fiftyacorn: I think the power is knowing who is moving what and where

mosura: Our money laundering supports freedom, while theirs supports tyranny etc.I love the whole “unexplained wealth” concept the UK developed, curiously enough after Abramovich had been running around buying Chelsea etc. If you are friend to MI6 this week you are allowed to do anything, but if you get on their wrong side you will be Berezhovskied.

overvale: Feelings about Palantir aside, this is a really misleading headline. The FCA has hired Palantir to "investigate the watchdog’s internal intelligence data", which presumably requires Palantir to have access to that sensitive data.Saying that Palantir is "reaching" into the British state, and then having the article image be "billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel" literally holding a wad of cash is... not exactly a high standard of reportage.

crimsoneer: Guardian doing clickbaity headline specifically to infuriate their readers, I am shoketh

Onavo: The AML you are thinking of is designed to catch small time crooks and drug mules (and maybe also dumb terrorist supporters). They are not really designed (or more specifically deliberately obtuse towards) Slavic oligarch money. Not all "corruption" and money laundering are treated equally. Places like London (not to mention Jersey), Switzerland, and Singapore are more for good old fashioned siphoning-of-national-assets type of corruption where there's almost always a "clean" paper trail to back things up. Also, don't get tax dodging mixed with money laundering. There are plenty of processes required by OECD and similar orgs, e.g. the concepts of a LEI number, that are not really useful against real oligarch/state level money launderers.Here's a simple example: You lived in a former USSR/iron curtain state. During the chaos of '89 you managed to "acquire" lots of assets or finagle yourself into owning former public companies/real estate/factories. The paper trail is clean as far as your typical London banks are concerned because you are merely liquidating assets you own in your own country where there's a full paper trail (regardless of whether it was attained through illegitimate means). Alternatively, in a different narrative, you a rich international student from similar types of countries and you just happened to have "rich parents" who have plenty of money to throw around. It's a very different threat model than for example trying to prevent grassroots terrorism financing.Money laundering vs tax evasion have a lot of overlap but don't get them confused. They are very different threat models from the perspective of the service provider (and it's also why many smaller foreign banks refuse to accept Americans as customers, partially because of the paperwork required to stay compliant with Uncle Sam).If you want an actual no-questions-asked romp of organized crime type of money I believe the current main contenders are the middle eastern states like Dubai (pre Iranian conflict at least).Rumor through the financial grapevine is that ironically there are many GCC middle eastern royalty/pseudo-royalty currently under house arrest who are trying to do the opposite i.e. get their assets out of the country because their main bank accounts are frozen domestically. So basically real life Nigerian princes.(As for why they are under house arrest, it's kinda out of scope for HN but mostly because of domestic political purges, especially in Saudi Arabia from what I heard)

Oarch: Thank you for a very detailed explanation.The rich international student pipeline has always stood out to me – we've seen dozens of 30, 40 or even 50 storey skyscrapers built for students, enjoying lifestyles usually reserved for those in high finance.It just seems very suspect to me.

parineum: > No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.That's not their job, that's the governments' job. So much of this (the article and your comment) is putting so much on Palantir when they are just doing the job asked of them. They don't work for the people, the government does.

underlipton: Western affluence was built on the movement of stolen people and goods; it stands to reason that its maintenance in an era where one of those is illegal and the other involves somewhat less looting might involve the movement of stolen debt (money).