Mr. Bastian, what you fail to realize is that all of the money you have made here is proceeds of crime and no-one should touch it. The Canadian banks are basically sending a message to the Government of The Bahamas saying this very point. When and if you get licensed you will still have plenty of dirty money that no respectable bank (except JP Morgan) would want to touch.

Can't buy respectability

Webshops are not the first "proceeds of crime" money in this country!!!!!!!!!!

The more he speaks I'm convinced he's not the brain behind the operation

Who ever made the comment about this man not being the brains behind the operation is right. Banks have to follow a KYC (Know your customer) chain of compliance. That means they have to know the origin of the money and the individuals behind it -- not just from the webshops, but from the customers of the webshops as well. The webshops do not do KYC and hence they are perfect venues for money laundering. Nobody launders money through a casino because of strict oversight. If the CEO of Island Luck can't see this, he indeed is a low fence - one brick short of a load. The figurehead chairman should know this as well.

Wow. To speak so confidently and to be so wrong. Before you speak any further please read the Gaming Act and its regulations. Web shops, by law must comply with the same kyc requirements of Bahamian banks pursuant to the FTRA. Further they are regulated by the same regulator as Casinos in the Bahamas so there is no difference in oversight. I do not know the chap, but what I know is that we should arm ourselves with knowledge and facts before spewing unfounded opinions and taking at face value everything someone tells us.

I would kindly suggest that you familiarise yourself with international standards, not Bahamian ones. I would also point out the KYC due diligence, several years ago, was transferred from a central body with rubrics to the individual institutions themselves, relying on their compliance procedures instead of central codified ones. In other words, it "we offer guidance, but no directives, and if you are wrong, it is your fault". That is why the Canadian banks are barring these essentially illegal funds. Your admonition about arming one's self with knowledge should be taken personally and not be skin deep -- with all respect.

How can you say that KYC is effected with a webshop account that is opened with dubious paper credentials by a disinterested employee who merely glanced at documentation when the account was opened?

Clever debate trick of when in doubt start talking even more confidently and begin to generalise, exaggerate and obfuscate. That does not change the fact that you were dead wrong in your statement above. Now you claim that under "international standards" "KYC due diligence several years ago, was transferred from a central body with rubrics to the individual institutions themselves, relying on their compliance procedures instead of central codified ones. In other words, it we offer guidance, but no directives, and if you are wrong, it is your fault". Do you really believe that? So are you saying that each Bahamian Bank or any bank in the world in any country, for that matter, can have its own kyc standards with no duty or obligations under local kyc laws? Please cite which central body in The Bahamas transferred such authority to "individual institutions" as you state above and under what legislation was this transfer effectuated?

Prior to 2011, ACAMS, which has international reach in publishing KYC and AML standards, published a Capability Maturity Model that re-stated Initial, Repeatable, Defined, Managed and Optimized models for KYC that eliminated specific rubrics and instead offered a simplified model with leeway for country-specific implementation. The specificity of the rubrics were taken away with the new model, and instead the compliance onus was placed on member implementation and not an ACAMS implementation algorithm. I am not talking about Bahamian legislation, I am talking about international KYC banking compliance procedures. And as to your questions, yes, each jurisdiction can have its own implementation procedure as long as it aligns with the ACAMS model of high level compliance. It is a huge problem for financial institutions, because in the old days, one could tick off a check list of compliance items. Now, one must insure KYC compliance without being specifically told how to do it, and if you get it wrong, you are censured and blacklisted. Generally, the compliance procedures are inspected but not tested rigorously until this is a compliance failure.

So in effect, different banks can have different implementation algorithms for KYC and they still all adhere to the high level KYC principles. The efficacy of the fit and form but not the function of KYC implementation models are not externally validated and verified with any rigor until there is a compliance failure.

Does this explain it for you in greater detail?

Go back to wiki and read that again until you understand it! And by the way if you are going to use wiki at least use the latest version.

You're too funny. My master's degree is in Machine-Learning to identify Customer Transfer Models for profiling and Transactional Behaviour Dynamic Models from Big Data on client accounts for KYC Compliance Planning. Look that up on Wiki! LOL!

You lost me at behavior dynamic models. But yay:) a lot of people think compliance is accounting for all the money they will earn **after** regulation, they fail to realize that there must be some **independent** verification of the source of every single dollar they've accumulated **before** regulation as well . Honestly I don't see how it's possible, not when the US may have indicted your business partner for human smuggling...how would you separate what was earned where?

You're absolutely right. BTW Behaviour Dynamic Models are particularly powerful things. Let's supposed a webshop does $300,000 a month. Let's suppose that it varies with a given standard deviation (a standard deviation for a particular set of data tells you how much the daily deposits vary by). Now lets supposed that the webshop shows that for two days out of the month, the deposits are way above the normal plus a standard deviation. In other words the deposits suddenly start to swing upwards from normal behaviour. If normal behaviour is resumed, then those transactions are suspicious. It looks like someone is laundering money. A computer monitors these transactions with a model. The model is built from the customers previous history.

But as you point out, that is after the fact. KYC also involves knowing who deposited those funds into your legitimate business, and the source of those funds. I am sure that the webshops do not do due diligence. They take everyone's money. I see illegal Jamaicans buying numbers and I'd like to examine the due diligence done on them.

And it is indeed laughable to think that you can deposit a businesses money into a chartered bank if your partner has been indicted by the US Dept of Justice.

Soooooooooooo, did Royal Bank take the Bay Street Boys bootlegging money back in the 1920s??????????? Did the Canadian banks take Pindling's drug boys' money back in the 1970s-80s?????? What is the difference now??????????? All is blood money....................... SMH

The difference is Al Qaeda, 9-11, FATCA, the John Doe subpoena, ISIS, ... the world has changed considerably.

*Branville McCartney told Tribune Business that the Bill makes the Bahamian gaming industry “a laughing stock”, because it provides for ministerial discretion to grant web shop operator licences to persons convicted of gambling-related and **other** offences.* Nov-14

it might well be that he is right.

But, will anyone have the guts to undo this legalization in the future?

I wonder.

I fear for people who buy condos from them. Once they have washed sufficient funds by selling to people whose income is legal, they can leave those communities anytime, unfinished or unkempt, and the home owners will have to finish it up.

has happened in other countries.