Good article. Speaking to people who work in this field, it has become a massive 'tick box' exercise. When KYC does actually pin point crime, the evidence is ignored. The UK's Natwest Bank was fined £millions for allowing money laundering in '21. They ignored the KYC issues and their own staff's whistleblowing.
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From the Natwest case;
"...One rule designed to flag suspicious activity was disabled by the bank because it created too many alerts, "so the bank decided it should be deactivated", ...while NatWest also recorded cash deposits by Fowler Oldfield as cheques between 2008 and March 2017... a NatWest cash centre in north-eastern England raised queries about Scottish banknotes, saying that they had a "musty smell", suggesting they might have been stored rather than in normal circulation."
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What a farce! And of course KYC can easily be weaponised to exclude any particular demographic you like.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59629711
One rule designed to flag suspicious activity was disabled by the bank because it created too many alerts
That's the result of creating laws that are too broad and vague, laws which put legitimate, everyday transactions under excessive scrutiny. These laws are designed to be ignored, because they're designed to be applied to anyone the state decides it wants to label a criminal.
KYC has no other goals than trying to make it harder to avoid or evade taxes, and control all monetary rails. Everything else is a cover story. KYC works for these real goals, not their stated ones.
... From the Natwest case; "...One rule designed to flag suspicious activity was disabled by the bank because it created too many alerts, "so the bank decided it should be deactivated", ...while NatWest also recorded cash deposits by Fowler Oldfield as cheques between 2008 and March 2017... a NatWest cash centre in north-eastern England raised queries about Scottish banknotes, saying that they had a "musty smell", suggesting they might have been stored rather than in normal circulation." ... What a farce! And of course KYC can easily be weaponised to exclude any particular demographic you like. ... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59629711