Any big amount transaction with some "suspected" nations has been monitored by the US gov. with or without that program, although they perhaps do not take any action within the US border.
I read that there was a Chinese business man, who had some exporting business in clothing in Nigeria, and everything would be ok if he used BoC in HK. But instead, he happened to trust Citibank in HK more, and got himself burned. After one several-million dollar transaction, his account suddenly was frozen by the US authority, claiming, without ANY proof, that he was sponsoring terrorists there.
Then this Chinese guy had to hire an lawyer in HK to deal with this. The US side wanted him to come to the US for inquiry, but some of his Chinese friends told him not to go, because if he were in the US in person, they would put him in prison even if they had NO any proof at all (there was this type of things happened to others). So he just did everything through that HK lawyer.
Long story short, after 2 years and more than half millions US$ expense and a lot of harassment from the US gov. and Citibank, and not until the HK lawyer threatened to take the US gov. and Citibank to the International court, the US gov. finally defrozen his account. Needless to say, he was almost bankrupt.
While we laughed at him that he trusted the Citibank more than BoC, still this is a horrible experience on his part. I bet whoever doing the business in those type of marked nations would register the incident and smart ones should switch their account away from the US banks. |
