[X] My Assistant

[Ascalaphus]

Well, just because the nuyen can be made secure, doesn't mean all money has to be traceable. Continuing from my earlier exposition, all single nuyen have a Nuyen-ID (NID); banks send a daily report to ZOG with all the NID in their collective accounts. ZOG verifies there aren't any duplicate NIDs, but otherwise isn't interested in who has how much in what account.

Now, those banks can allow anonymous accounts if they wish (and they will, because there's money to be made that way). They issue a credstick, and say "It's your responsibility: this credstick is the only way to withdraw from this anonymous account. Whoever holds it can spend the money in it. Don't come crying to us if you lose it, since we don't know who you are."

The account is just a number where people can deposit money, and a credstick to transfer out of it. Ideally, the bank keeps all its transactions secret, but just to be sure, you use a couple of hundred of these in different banks that aren't really on information-sharing terms with each other and haul the money through all these accounts; at the end tracing the flow will be almost impossible.

Why would the CC allow this? First: why not? They want a stable currency, and this doesn't threaten that. Second, they want to be able to pay shadowrunners themselves, and this is a convenient way of doing it.

[eyeBliss]

If it's B then you can't get paid by people for doing anti-social acts, because all funds are completely traceable. And hence capturing the poor deniable asset and torturing them until they give up the certified credstick they were paid with means they can pin who paid for the job.

But isn't knowing in which account funds reside and verifying their validity different from knowing who has access to those funds? I'm guessing ZOG has about as much interest in knowing the who's and where's of transactions as Swiss banks today do. With the legal system as it is, is it even necessary to launder nuyen as long as it is not counterfeit? I wouldn't think ZOG has any legal responsibility to report suspicious transactions. Banking and the law really aren't my wheel house, but I think the financial and legal questions created by extraterritoriality are kind of interesting.

[Ascalaphus]

But isn't knowing in which account funds reside and verifying their validity different from knowing who has access to those funds? I'm guessing ZOG has about as much interest in knowing the who's and where's of transactions as Swiss banks today do. With the legal system as it is, is it even necessary to launder nuyen as long as it is not counterfeit? I wouldn't think ZOG has any legal responsibility to report suspicious transactions. Banking and the law really aren't my wheel house, but I think the financial and legal questions created by extraterritoriality are kind of interesting.

Well put.

Well, they'd record suspicious transactions that would indicate someone was screwing with the nuyen system; they're not interested in tax evasion or any of that, just if someone is threatening the stability of the world currency.

[Nath]

Besides, it's relatively easy to break the money trail through physical trading. The corporation subsidiary buys gold, orichalcum, dollars, weapons, medications, or whatever, and hand it for free to an independent shell company fully owned by a straw man. Said company then sell it to anybody on the market, and use those nuyen to pay runners.

Auditing the shell company can only prove those are slush funds of some sort (but, if you're looking there, you were already kinda suspecting it, weren't you ?). If you could somehow search the subsidiary records, maybe you could prove the goods were delivered in the first place, exactly where the shell company picked them up. Assuming they didn't forge the records (which they would be stupid not to do). And that would first require you to know which corporation and which subsidiary to search.

[suoq]

Except it doesn't work that way with RAW.

If I take a R5 credstick into a cornerstore to buy a few bags of chips, they probably wont have a very good verification system, a 1 maybe a 2.

Unwired, Page 11:

A lot of stores don’t even carry credstick readers anymore.

But it doesn't matter. You missed what I was saying and I don't see the need to argue over a misunderstanding. The people who understand statistics understood what I said.

[kzt]

Besides, it's relatively easy to break the money trail through physical trading. The corporation subsidiary buys gold, orichalcum, dollars, weapons, medications, or whatever, and hand it for free to an independent shell company fully owned by a straw man. Said company then sell it to anybody on the market, and use those nuyen to pay runners.

Auditing the shell company can only prove those are slush funds of some sort (but, if you're looking there, you were already kinda suspecting it, weren't you ?). If you could somehow search the subsidiary records, maybe you could prove the goods were delivered in the first place, exactly where the shell company picked them up. Assuming they didn't forge the records (which they would be stupid not to do). And that would first require you to know which corporation and which subsidiary to search.

You roll up the organization piece by piece. You know what bank put the money on the certified credstick. So your hackers pull the records and find out where the money came from. The guy who you cannot trace it past is the guy who will mysteriously vanish one day. Or someone senior at the bank/organization will discover in themselves a sudden urge to explain exactly how this happened to some very humorless guys with guns.

[Manunancy]

You roll up the organization piece by piece. You know what bank put the money on the certified credstick. So your hackers pull the records and find out where the money came from. The guy who you cannot trace it past is the guy who will mysteriously vanish one day. Or someone senior at the bank/organization will discover in themselves a sudden urge to explain exactly how this happened to some very humorless guys with guns.

It's doable - but that sort of things costs money and will piss peoples off - some of them not of a sort you'd like being mad at you. Which means that sort of effort will only be pulled out when's there's some serious money involved. The coproporations have to whatch their profit ratings, and if the cost of securing the systems starts getting higher than the losses it prevents, they'll step back.

Sure there's some part of revenge-style tracking going on, but usually it's either some exec's pet peeve or part of an effort to put the fear of Bad Things into whoever might conisder hurting the corporation. Not a permanent, overriding concern.

[suoq]

It's doable - but that sort of things costs money and will piss peoples off

That sort of thing was standard practice at the credit card processor I worked with. Because small discrepancies lead to large discrepancies and are easier dealt with early when they can be isolated, small discrepancies are handled with a disproportionate level of response.

Being able to balance the money coming in and the money going out at any level, from product-wide to individual accounts on a cycle* basis is necessary in order to find and identify discrepancies as well as insure our clients that we were acting with all due diligence. We wrote a lot of software whose sole purpose was the auditing of other software and the data going through that software (and then we wrote software that audited the auditing software...).

For an understanding of how minute amount of discrepancies can and have been followed up on, read "The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage" by Clifford Stoll

That story begins with a $0.75 accounting error which was tracked to 9 seconds of time. From there it reached levels that, from the standpoint of 75 cents, are completely disproportionate to the original discovery, but that's how things begin. In the words of Egg Shen "That was nothing. But that's how it always begins. Very small."

----

*read "daily" if "cycle" is confusing.

[Fortinbras]

I presume that your company, suoq, was obeying the law.
Who in the Sixth World does that?

In the world of the 2070's, clandestine dealings are a necessity from the lowest SINless street thug to the upper echelons of the Corporate Court. A system was created to fund such dealings and only those wishing to start obeying the law would seek to get rid of it.
If all funds are traceable, then a greater deal of transparency would exist; which just isn't very Shadowrun.

[suoq]

I presume that your company, suoq, was obeying the law.
Who in the Sixth World does that?

While we did have stuff in place for post-Enron laws, the simple truth was that auditing one's business is cost-effective. Even if your business is clandestine, you audit your business, because it's good business. Back in the day, the auditing was simpler and the records harder to encrypt (such as Al Capone's financial records). It hard to prevent loss if you don't even try.

If all funds are traceable, then a greater deal of transparency would exist; which just isn't very Shadowrun.

Why not? The goal in a transparent system is to be as transparent as the system. If the funds are moving though fake SINs and dummy corporations and are being transferred out of those accounts for goods and services that are harder to trace, so much the better. What's more shadowrun than being paid in medicine or black market 'ware or smuggled foci? Why wouldn't Mr. Johnson tell the runners that they want one specific crate and you guys get the rest of the shipment? The cost of the papers (the information about the shipment, security, etc from Mr. Johnson), is the crate. No money needed.

[Ascalaphus]

I presume that your company, suoq, was obeying the law.
Who in the Sixth World does that?

In the world of the 2070's, clandestine dealings are a necessity from the lowest SINless street thug to the upper echelons of the Corporate Court. A system was created to fund such dealings and only those wishing to start obeying the law would seek to get rid of it.
If all funds are traceable, then a greater deal of transparency would exist; which just isn't very Shadowrun.

Actually, great transparency isn't really necessary. The ZOG doesn't particularly care* who transfers money to who; they just don't want anyone introducing fake nuyen or otherwise compromising the currency.

Only a limited number of banks are allowed to have accounts with nuyen in them; all nuyen are in accounts in those banks. It's a closed system: the banks only transfer nuyen to each other. To get nuyen, you need an account in one of those banks. Then someone transfers nuyen into that account (wages, perhaps), or you exchange your foreign currency for nuyen and those are put into your account.

Now, every cycle, ZOG tallies up the nuyen in all the banks, and checks if the total amount is still the same (it should be). If there's a discrepancy, they analyze the inter-bank traffic to figure out in what bank it originated.

Then, ZOG tells that bank to adjust their total nuyen balance by X, to eliminate the discrepancy; now the Nuyen is correct again. Then the bank investigates its own transactions to determine which account caused the discrepancy, and takes "steps" to make sure it doesn't happen again.

All in all, this requires very little transparency; ZOG only needs to know about inter-bank transfers. They're just there to keep the banks honest about the money supply. They don't need to know to who any account belongs; accounts can be perfectly anonymous. Also, there's nothing stopping people from selling their nuyen to their bank for a different currency, and depositing that in a different bank for nuyen.

*In general. Of course there may be a disloyal person in ZOG who uses his privileged position to spy on people's business, but that's not ZOG policy.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

*In general. Of course there may be a disloyal person in ZOG who uses his privileged position to spy on people's business, but that's not ZOG policy.

At least not publicly... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Fortinbras]

While we did have stuff in place for post-Enron laws, the simple truth was that auditing one's business is cost-effective. Even if your business is clandestine, you audit your business, because it's good business. Back in the day, the auditing was simpler and the records harder to encrypt (such as Al Capone's financial records). It hard to prevent loss if you don't even try.

I'm sure that loss prevention is a very big things, especially in the AAA world of Shadowrun. Whole buildings of number crunchers and nodes full of Agents looking to squeeze every last cent of efficiency out of a division.
I'm also saying that there are plenty of "discretionary funds" that the AAAs can't keep on the books for obvious reasons. Somebody is paying Dr. Sharon to keep Puck locked up and they probably don't want that on the books. Even for ZOG. It is in that company's, and every clandestine company's, best interest to have an untraceable system of payment in place in the world for such things. Things like hiring Shadowrunners.
This way MCT can't trace the funds of the runners hired to break into their compound back to NeoNET, and vice versa. Companies need to be able to give the VP of "Deniable Assets Management" a large fund for which he isn't going to get receipts. That VP is probably skimming off the top, but that kind of corruption is inherit in breaking the law. You just have to calculate that corruption into your budget.

However, if those funds are traceable, traceable at all, then those assets aren't deniable anymore. There is a very clear paper trail from MCT to the runners to the break-in. The same things that got Nixon.
In order to circumvent this, the AAAs had to come up with a modern version of cash, the certified credstick. An untraceable form of payment for clandestine dealings. It's been there in every edition and it works fine.
I find it hard to believe that any corporate entity in the 6th world would suddenly make such a thing traceable when doing so would very clearly sink all of them in their clandestine dealings.

Why not? The goal in a transparent system is to be as transparent as the system. If the funds are moving though fake SINs and dummy corporations and are being transferred out of those accounts for goods and services that are harder to trace, so much the better. What's more shadowrun than being paid in medicine or black market 'ware or smuggled foci? Why wouldn't Mr. Johnson tell the runners that they want one specific crate and you guys get the rest of the shipment? The cost of the papers (the information about the shipment, security, etc from Mr. Johnson), is the crate. No money needed.

That's perfectly fine. I'm also saying that Shadowrunners are often paid in cash and it is in the company who hired them's best interest to keep that cash untraceable.
Not all missions for which Shadowrunners are hired can be paid in goods. Most all the Missions payments and published adventure payments come in the form of certified cred, which means payment in untracable cash is also a viable option.

Actually, great transparency isn't really necessary. The ZOG doesn't particularly care* who transfers money to who; they just don't want anyone introducing fake nuyen or otherwise compromising the currency.

All in all, this requires very little transparency; ZOG only needs to know about inter-bank transfers. They're just there to keep the banks honest about the money supply. They don't need to know to who any account belongs; accounts can be perfectly anonymous. Also, there's nothing stopping people from selling their nuyen to their bank for a different currency, and depositing that in a different bank for nuyen.

This is what I'm saying. That keeping a traceable code on every exchange of currency isn't necessary and those with enough clout to do so wouldn't even try.

And no good sentence ever started with the word "Actually..."

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

And no good sentence ever started with the word "Actually..."

But, many many bad ones do... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[sabs]

if ZoG can trace every nuyen through every account it ever goes through, then Shadowrun doesn't work. It has to be more that ZoG has a way of authenticating every Nuyen, to make sure only the nuyen they create are legal. But they don't track /where/ the Nuyen is, just that it's incredibly stupidly long authentication certificate is legal and unique.


Unless you do what I've done for my Quebec game. Most < Middle Life style don't deal in Nuyen. They use Scripts. Quebec Ecu, AA Scripts of various sorts. Shadowrunners get paid in large quantities of Paper script, that they then launder, and use to buy stuff. People just don't use Nuyen unless they're living a Middle+ lifestyle. And even then, most shadowrunner purchases are done with paper scripts.

[CanRay]

And no good sentence ever started with the word "Actually..."

When I start one that way, better break out the brain bleach. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

[Ascalaphus]

And no good sentence ever started with the word "Actually..."

"Actually..." your sister is alive and well, but we thought it better not to tell the crazy axe-murderer.

[eyeBliss]

I'm not a law talking guy, but I think our current day conception of what a bank account is basically went away when extraterritoriality started. In Shadowrun, every bank account exists in an off-shore legal and moral vacuum. There is no need for any personal information to be exchanged when starting the account and any attempt at legal discovery is basically a moot point. In order to get any record of wrong doing, you need to already know all of the information (parties and transactions) involved. I don't think a sovereign nation (which is what every corp and by extension every bank that has nuyen in it is) can be legally compelled to release what amounts to a state secret. It would be equivalent to filling a freedom of information act inquiry into funding for U.S. sanctioned black ops expenditures. I guess the primary thrust of my argument is that ZOG only cares that the nuyen used in transaction is authentic and that moving it from account A to account B doesn't create any kind of verifiable paper trail in the way we would currently conceive of it and any records would be of limited use even if you could obtain them.

[CanRay]

"Yes! My FoI stuff came in! I now have... ... ... Ten thousand pages of blacked out everything." "No, they didn't redact the words 'or', 'and', and 'dog'." "Well, that's something."

[hobgoblin]

Companies need to be able to give the VP of "Deniable Assets Management" a large fund for which he isn't going to get receipts. That VP is probably skimming off the top, but that kind of corruption is inherit in breaking the law. You just have to calculate that corruption into your budget.

Reminds me of Ruthless.com, where one could use the security departments for illegal actions (the AI loved to firebomb for some reason).

Problem was that said department would build up blackmail points, resulting in it becoming a money sink. Only real option was a expensive purge that would basically destroy the department.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/tom-...cys-ruthlesscom

[hobgoblin]

I'm not a law talking guy, but I think our current day conception of what a bank account is basically went away when extraterritoriality started. In Shadowrun, every bank account exists in an off-shore legal and moral vacuum. There is no need for any personal information to be exchanged when starting the account and any attempt at legal discovery is basically a moot point. In order to get any record of wrong doing, you need to already know all of the information (parties and transactions) involved. I don't think a sovereign nation (which is what every corp and by extension every bank that has nuyen in it is) can be legally compelled to release what amounts to a state secret. It would be equivalent to filling a freedom of information act inquiry into funding for U.S. sanctioned black ops expenditures. I guess the primary thrust of my argument is that ZOG only cares that the nuyen used in transaction is authentic and that moving it from account A to account B doesn't create any kind of verifiable paper trail in the way we would currently conceive of it and any records would be of limited use even if you could obtain them.

So basically it is like operating out of jersey or such. Hell, one is not so much dealing with actual currency as numbers on a ledger. Basically you have a supposed claim on the content of some vault, but beyond that there is nothing really on hand. a certified credstick is basically digital bearer bonds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearer_bond

[CanRay]

Actually that's a good way to think of certified credsticks, only there's still some trace to them. The issuing bank of the credstick and the serial numbers on the nuyen can still be tracked somewhat. It just get muddled as they're flipped around from Credstick to Credstick to CommLink to Black Bank Account to Off-Shore Bank Account (In a country with strong personal privacy laws which are recognized by the Corporate Court), and so on...

And thus money laundering is still able to be done despite the electronic nature of the nuyen.

[hobgoblin]

May even be easier, as it can move about so fast that doing a back trace, especially if one encounter hostile legal territories, can be a virtual nightmare. "Yes sir, we traced the transfers to xyz. But they are stonewalling us."

[CanRay]

"OK, who do we have to bribe at the Caribbean First Bank of Chrome Accountant in order to get the name of the people transferring the funds?" "Actually, we did bribe him, and he provided the data... Numbered accounts only, no names, no way to trace them more than that." "DAMNIT!"

[Ascalaphus]

I think that laundering nuyen is quite easy; it's just that forging them is nearly impossible. Which would be fine with the principal stakeholders.