SataBank Closed

#221
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mbj said:
@Martin EversonBut I'll keep the business one open, as I'll need an MT prefixed IBAN for accepting CC payments for some future products.

I'll just drain the Satabank account regularly to reduce risk.
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You mean your sata business account is still functioning? The bank is dead for inbound and outbound payments they are usingf MFSA accounts to do outbound refunds to clients. Has something changed?
 
#222
> You mean your sata business account is still functioning?

No. I'm just keeping the business account open for the eventual event they may restart operations. Not closing the account prematurely.

Applying for business bank accounts in Malta is a PITA, hence just keeping it open to have one option more.

I'm still in the process to open another business account in Malta. And at the rate Malta has problems with banks it seems you should have a stockpile of them But never hold any amount of money there that you are not willing to loose.
 
#223
mbj said:
No. I'm just keeping the business account open for the eventual event they may restart operations. Not closing the account prematurely.
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Ok I can see that angle as they are interested buyers according to some old press.
 
#225
FYI @Elve he does not need an MT iban despite what he says. I guess this is a personal choice for cosmetic purposes he is making as IBAN discrimination in EU is against EU law period. Countries within SEPA area are obligated to accept any IBAN from any SEPA member country. They cannot discriminate against foreign iban's which would be a violation of Article 9(2) of the SEPA Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 260/2012).

P.S There maybe financial institutions in violation of this EU rule and they should be reported to their FSA as I have done in the past.
 
#226
@Martin Everson In reality I've got problems with various CC merchants, they'd only accept my business if I provide an MT prefixed IBAN.

I'm considering to start also reporting these. The product / CC merchant requirements in question is OT here so I'll not go deeper.
 
#227
mbj said:
@Martin Everson In reality I've got problems with various CC merchants, they'd only accept my business if I provide an MT prefixed IBAN.
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Report them. If they are in SEPA area they are in violation of EU law period.

P.S Sounds like joker CC merchants.
 
#228
This is interesting. Google Ireland will only pay to bank accounts in countries where the business is registered. If you have Malta business, Google won't accept non MT IBAN.
 
#229
Paypal is letting you withdraw only to the local EU account, and this is EU's regulation on them.
EU is violating own laws all the time when it fits them better. Nothing new here.
 
#230
BlueMist said:
Google Ireland will only pay to bank accounts in countries where the business is registered. If you have Malta business, Google won't accept non MT IBAN.
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Report them immediately!!!

Hopefully they will get fined yet again by EU. Google got to realize they not above EU law to make such decisions unilaterally.
 
#231
Martin Everson said:
Hopefully they will get fined yet again by EU. Google got to realize they not above EU law to make such decisions unilaterally.
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Same thing happened to me with a German gambling company (sports betting). I wanted to withdraw my winnings and they rejected my account because it wasn't in the country of my citizenship (yes, citizenship, not even residence...).

I'm pretty sure the free movement of people and services in Schengen area guarantees banking services in any country. Yet some companies just set their own rules. Even funnier was getting a refund out of Microsoft Ireland, they refused to send a bank transfer and instead mailed me a paper cheque which is a fucking thing I've never used in my life and I had to go to three banks until the fourth one finally was able to pay me the cheque with a 1 % fee.

I would fight this bulls**t if I knew it will make a difference but fighting rules of big companies is difficult..
 
Reactions: Martin Everson
#235
KJK said:
Same thing happened to me with a German gambling company (sports betting). I wanted to withdraw my winnings and they rejected my account because it wasn't in the country of my citizenship (yes, citizenship, not even residence...).
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Damn citizenship . Sometimes you just have to fight back against these bullies. Even UK's HMRC is in breach of EU law as they only send tax refunds to UK accounts and if you complain then they send you a cheque instead...lol.
 
#237
#238
This is how the shady Russian mafia connected owner of defunct satabank operates . One should read carefully and be wary of dealing with any of his companies such as Leopay or icard etc period!!!

The slap happy banker - Manuel Delia

---- quote

The Times of Malta and I are facing separate but similar defamation lawsuits brought against us by Christo Georgiev, the principal owner of Satabank.

Satabank was a Maltese bank in business between 2016 and 2018. In that short space of time it grew rapidly, mostly because of the gaming industry here in Malta. HSBC and APS do not touch gaming companies. Bank of Valletta would rather it didn’t. So Sata became the go-to bank for that industry.

Members of the large expatriate community also flocked there for their personal banking. The other high street banks stretched new clients on the rack to consider opening a current account for them. Satabank’s policy with new clients was a bit wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am and its growth rate was stratospheric.

Entirely innocent customers attributed Satabank’s relative efficiency to a refreshing competitive advantage in customer service. But its competitors knew intuitively something was wrong with Sata. They felt there was no way the new kid on the block was anywhere near complying with the statutory procedures to block dirty money from going through the system.

This was the time of the Pilatus Bank debacle. Malta’s pathetic inability to regulate and control money-laundering operations disguised as banks was now evident to everyone. And murmurs started to emerge that Satabank would be “the next Pilatus”.

Journalists working for the Times of Malta and others started to dig into Georgiev’s past. He had been in business in Luxembourg before he came to Malta but he oddly had renounced his Luxembourgish license voluntarily. In financial services terms, Malta is not an upgrade on Luxembourg. Why did he move?

It turned out that Luxembourg financial intelligence agents were on to Georgiev and the evidence they were gathering was piling up. He quit the scene and came to Malta. Luxembourg investigators shared their findings with their Maltese colleagues forewarning them that Georgiev was trouble.

Yet, somehow, he still got his licence to open a Maltese bank. That’s the way we roll.

Georgiev also owns a business that operates point-of-sale terminals. Press reports covered investigations into allegations that the terminals were used in Greece and Venezuela to by-pass currency controls.

When I reported this on my own blog (manueldelia.com) in March 2018, Satabank was still pumping. Georgiev hired Maltese lawyers to push me to delete my reports.

If I didn’t I was told Georgiev would sue me in the UK where his point-of-sale terminals business is based. In a friendly aside, his lawyer told me that if his client lived up to his threat, I’d have to jump off the nearest cliff.

Put plainly, I was scared. I took the story down and signed a retraction agreement with one of Georgiev’s pocket directors. The deal came with instructions on how to expunge my article from any results of Google searches into Georgiev.

Then, in October 2018, s**t hit the fan. The Maltese regulators, keen to make up for the catastrophic Pilatus experience, fell on Satabank and froze its clients’ money.

Systematic, all-pervasive, structural deficiencies in anti-money laundering procedures were found and the bank was slapped – excuse the entirely intended pun – with a record €3 million fine. But no one was charged. Because that’s the way we roll.

But there was much suffering and gnashing of teeth.

Businesses got locked out of their cash box. Some had to fold and dismiss their employees. Salaries went unpaid for months and some employees were reduced to scrounging for bread and milk.

Though most of the pain was suffered by expats or non-residents, some Maltese businesses who banked at Satabank folded. The dreams of start-ups were shattered.

Georgiev, on the other hand, went back home to Bulgaria continuing serenely as though the day his bank was shut down was just like any other. But he still has the classic Google problem.

Anyone thinking of doing business with Georgiev will find the Satabank mess. That is why he needs anything written about his past record, the suspicions into his conduct and about the consequences of his actions for entirely innocent victims erased from the record.

You can’t sue for libel in Malta more than a year after something you are complaining about was published. And asking a court to order the destruction of material that has already been published would be an outrage. Also, there’s the annoying detail that the Times of Malta and I could, in a Malta courtroom, summon witnesses and have his vexatious arguments dismissed.

So, he sued us where we cannot defend ourselves even if we could afford to, because we can’t make witnesses appear to sustain our case.

He’s not after the money. He’s after the fear that paying him damages would be our last act in journalism.

And that fear would force us to do his bidding and delete the offending stories from the last two years from the online record.

He knows it has worked in the past. Times of Malta complied (to a certain extent) with a similar demand from Pilatus Bank’s Ali Sadr Hasheminejad.

I complied with a similar demand from Satabank’s Georgiev himself. If this country fails to defend its journalists from the aggression of its corrupt bankers, its citizens will no longer know what’s being done with their money, their economy and their collective reputation.

It’s not Times of Malta or myself that are being slapped now. You are.

--- end quote
 
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Reactions: Marie Manila and KJK
#239
@Martin Everson

In the light of a la grill Daphne, that Times of Malta author could not be much more reckless. It's safer (but still sufficient for journalism) to stay a little more generic with references to "top management of... major shareholders of..."

High caliber crooks don't rise to top without a reason. They know how to avoid big errors, and any error they do get caught with is usually small enough to avoid Swedish curtains. Most wrong-doings of this guy and others like him aren't provable at all. Taken to court, lawyers will make him look like virgin Mary. If not, his good connections will make the punishment rather cosmetic. If indeed taken out of the scene, someone else will replace him. There are thousands like him. Getting one punished won't end money laundering. You can't replace yourself though. Are the clicks worth the risk?

Anyone interested in writing about money laundering should instead look one layer below - the crimes. Money laundering is just the boring payments that follow.

Only by reducing crime you reduce money laundering. There is no other way.
 
#240
Kudos to the author. He told it as it is. People who speak out in Malta about such things get blown up literally. So it takes a brave person to continue to speak out and to know your up against a criminal with means to silence you through the court system or via other means . leopay and icard should be blacklisted by all banks. Shame on unicredit bank for offering the mafia group banking services. They will only have themselves to blame when US hits them.They can't plead ignorance when they accepted leopay business after satabank money laundering saga. They are either blind, have no access to google search or someone got paid off in unicredit period.

I will repeat it yet again for the removal of any doubt. Avoid any EMI or bank with Russian connections. Whether it is leopay, icard, epayments, satabank, revolut, eqibank etc avoid like the plague. People will only come back and tell me I was right. Avoid the future heartache dealing with these type of institutions will bring on yourself.
 
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