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How Black Accounts Work - A Cyprus Connection?
A central criticism of the decision to seize a portion of the bank accounts in Cyprus is that the "bite" hits small guys who have accounts with a balance of less than E100k. As I write, it appears that there will be some revisions to the deal that was announced over the weekend. Those changes will likely minimize or eliminate the hit on these "smaller" accounts.
It is a travesty (and a crime) if Cypriots who live and work in the country have a portion of their accounts clipped. The small guys were not part of the problem, so they should not have been part of the solution. This obvious conclusion begs the question, "Why did they do it in the first place?" There are two possible answers:
The folks who put the original plan together were a bunch of misinformed idiots. They did not consider the fairness aspect, nor did they consider the deposit rules on <E100k sized accounts. The plan was hatched and announced before the big Finance Ministers, politicians and the ECB had a chance to consider the broader Macro issues and the possibility of a deposit run in other EU countries.
Given how so many other aspects of the EU financial story have been mismanaged, there is some possibility that this is how it played out. The whole process was bungled; no one ever considered the contagion risks. It was a complete screw up from beginning to end.
I have a very hard time believing that this scenario is correct. I think all of the EU deciders were involved with the choice. There was consideration of the related risks, the decision was made to go forward in spite of those risks.
NOTE: It's my bet that the decision was communicated to key US officials. Bernanke, Jack Lew and Obama were all informed before it was public.
To me, the only possibility for including the sub E100k in the haircut was because many of the smaller accounts, were also hot money accounts from foreign depositors. The folks in the EU must have understood this when they pulled the plug. (That, or we go back to the "idiots" answer)
Note: I have never had a black account in a Cypriot Bank. I have no black accounts, period. Never had. I have no direct knowledge of how black accounts were managed in Cyprus. BUT, I do know how black accounts were/are managed in other hot money havens. I strongly suspect that what happens outside of Cyprus also happens within Cyprus.
Assume you're a crook of some sort. You have ill gotten gains. Extortion money? Dictator/Politician who stole money from the national treasury? Maybe a pirate, a drug lord or a kidnapper? An Oligarch perhaps? How about a simple jewel thief or bank robber? A tax cheat? Or even just some poor guy who is trying to hide some loot from a wife?
WHAT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO YOU?
Access to your money of course. What's the fun of having a few mil stashed away and not being able to enjoy what that money can bring? You want bling! $5,000 a night hotel suites, 1st class travel all the time, $1000 bottles of wine, $8g for shoes - you can't have enough of this stuff! And you must have some cash in your pocket. For you, a minimum of $5g in the wallet is necessary. You need to have access to $5g pretty much every day to keep up with all the fun.
How do you do all that? Simple! A credit card tied to a bank is all you need. It's no regular CC. This one is imbedded with a chip. It's better than "smart".
There is no credit involved; behind the CC is a special account. That account is like a checking account. When you hit the VISA for $50k for some bauble, the transaction clears, as there is cash money behind the card. To have the ability to spend serious money on a CC you need a balance of at least $100k in the account. In addition, many banks require that you maintain a minimum amount, say $50k.
How do YOU feed the CC clearing account? Simple! You have on line banking! When inserted into a special reader that you have, the chip produces a one-time code/password, (the code changes every 30 seconds, so log on quick!). The "bank" has a similar code reader device, and it "knows" what that password will be for those thirty seconds. With the account now opened, you can transfer more money to the transaction account. Party on!
Wives/girl friends can get a card too! Those don't have chips, so you can cut them off at will! Cash is a problem, but with a couple of cards, $4k can be had every twelve hours or so.
What does this cost you? To start with, you must have a couple mil in another account. Call that "key money". On each CC purchase you make, the bank takes an extra 1% right off the top. Call that a "service fee". You spend a million on a CC, it costs you $10g - who cares?
Do you live in a City? Pretty much anywhere on the globe? When you walk around today and see all the tourists living it up and shopping like crazy - understand that "hot" cards are a significant portion of that activity. The problem with hot cards is that you don't want to use them in your home town. That draws attention, and YOU don't want that, right? So travel well!
AGAIN - I don't know what happened in Cyprus. However, if a significant number of the "smaller" accounts that are subject to the deposit theft are connected to CC clearing accounts of non-residents, then you have a possible explanation for the actions that were taken.
NOTE:
I AIN'T TAKING SIDES! I'm reporting some information that may or may not be relevant to the discussion on Cyprus. I'm not trying to justify the actions that the EU has taken. I'm trying to understand what motivated them to take such drastic and dangerous action.
That said, if you still need to shoot the messenger, please feel free to do so. BK
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I'm sticking with stupid, it's usually the correct answer for everything, particularly where complex systems are involved.
The only way to save the banks is through theft. I'm sure the ECB would love to implement the Fed's theft policy, which is across the board and easier to hide (a slow bleed) but it doesn't have the authority (read: Germany refuses to accept inflation).
Behind the scenes, they decided on deposit clipping (being implemented now in New Zealand I might add, watch to see if it spreads), which has the same effect as inflation but targets the "bad guys" instead of all European depositors. Who are the bad guys? Not the Russians. No. Those naughty, "uncompetitive" PIIGS. You've got to channel Schaeuble to see this for what it really is. Hard I know, you're probably not that much of a cunt.
They've wanted deposit clipping for a while, here was a chance to try it. It's Cyprus, a piss-ant country, what systemic effects could there possibly be? Maybe some angry Russians but screw them.
Perhaps they'll be right and it will all blow over with enough jaw-boning (usually seems to), but watch for this trend. (Are there Russians in New Zealand too? How do you explain that? And Australia going after quiet accounts? They Russian as well?)
Onto the Russian angle. I repeat: BULLSHIT!
Does anyone seriously believe that they don't have the resources to go after dodgy accounts in a targeted manner? How many accounts are we talking here? More than the number of dodgy accounts that Americans hold/held in Switzerland? Nah, instead of doing this by the numbers, you know, legally with some investigative elbow grease, we're just going to clip all the innocents too. I call bullshit on the Russian crim explanation.
This isn't about the Russians. This is just some arrogant eurocore wankers thinking they can push around tiny nations to extract their pound of flesh without there being any serious ramifications. I hope it does become systemic because then they end up paying more than their victims.
Profiling or not it's still just stealing. If they know that the money if from criminal activity they should take it to court. If they don't have a case they should bugger off. I feel certain they are a bigger group of crooks than the account holders.
What's with this "Credit Card" Bruce describes?
Where I come from, Australia, it's called a Debit Card and I've had one for several years, because I'm damned if I'll have a Credit Card with outrageous interest charges and dodgy security.
In any case there's nothing new or complicated about it, whether or not the funds in the account are "black", which mine are not. The only mystery to me is how I'd get hot money into the account on a large scale - after all you can't wander into your local bank branch and deposit $1m + in used notes, without drawing attention.
$10 says the Oligarchs didn't lose a dime
they did it to trigger a global cash crunch, a totally predictable global cash crunch, suddenly everybody is thinking "hey do I got too much cash in the bank?"
I spend my cash as fast as I can, anybody in cash is a "debasement chump".
You're fixated on the wrong thing, Bruce. Black accounts? How about black "money?"
It was also designed to discourage Russian influence on Cyprus and is related to the war in Syria.Nato doesn't want a Russian port in Cyprus or any kind ofstaging areas for their contractors.Don't worry,it's just the start of taking tens of billions away from a bunch of crooks.Another big crook just wants that bread.
It is certainly possible that there was a lot of illegal money in Cyprus. I've heard that a lot of Russian money went into Cyprus accounts. London is also supposedly a popular destination for Russian money.
However by assuming that ALL the money is illegal, you are hurting a lot of perfectly innocent people as well. This action will be watched by people in other European countries with weak banking systems and will increase the odds of a banking panic in those countries. The only thing that prevents bank runs is a belief that deposits will be protected by the government. When that starts to waver, watch out!
Fuck tard Bruce is too stupid to understand the simple concepts of property rights and due process. Much easier to assume everyone's a crook to justify bankster theft. What a filthy shill.
Arguments like that justify all the attacks on the constitution and personal freedom. Bruce's articles were always for light weights, but now his true colors shine for all to see.
Bruce is certainly not a fucktard --- but he IS an amoral bastard.
Is this how Bermuda and The Caymans works?
No.
"...if you still need to shoot the messenger, please feel free to do so. BK"
I ain't gonna do it, because I lost no money in this fuck-up.
However, other people might be less understanding...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaly_Kaloyev
Life might become extremely exciting in the months to come, for all bank CEOs, and politicians who'll vote for this thing in Cyprus.
"I work my ass off and get 1 percent on my savings. They do nothing and get twelve." Russian, English, American, Tibetan....freakin' "the dude from Marakesh"...these are ALL story lines and should be ignored. "Cyprus is small" and "that's why it happened." Europe needs capitalism...SOMEWHERE. "they discovered Cyprus instead." or should I say "Cyprus discovered them"? We'll never know. "done deal...move along." By advice stays the same: "build churches not banks." mosques are okay. So are schools for the advancement of a moral order. If there is one perennial deficit on the Planet it is people who know good and can execute. If Cypriots believed "they had it made with all those "Russian mafia" paying the bills" now they know. They do...and now did not. "and yet again we discover that propaganda and money don't mix well."
First they came for the bad guy's money but I didn't care because I'm not a bad guy;
Then they took the money of anyone in proximity to the bad guy but I didn't care because my money is far away bad guy money;
Etc. Small depositors? Collateral damage, we've grown accustomed to that concept--hell if it's OK for bombs it's OK for wealth confiscation, right?
The issue is due process and property rights.
Yeah, you'd think all this was obvious and the whole point. Way to distract from the key issues Bruce. Never mind the arbitrary confiscation and collective financial punishment - here's how crooks hide and spend ill-gotten gains!
And remember, we had to get Saddam because he supported terrorism. Oh, 9/11? Not that. He sent checks to families of Palestinian suicide bombers targeting Israel. Not my fault if you got the wrong idea.
Some one changed it to dupe process.
Heh, good one.
Hey Bruce! Europe is bankrupt, the real criminals are the bankers, not the Russians.
Two potential scenarios, neither one is satisfying:
The 'idiot' scenario and the John Travolta-esque 'Mr Big' fantasy scenario complete with black handlebar mustaches and discos.
BOOM-shaka-lakka-lakka ... BOOM!
The money flowing in and out of Cyprus was (is?) the excess earnings of Russian resource tycoons, the same folks who supply countries like Germany with natural gas and motor fuel.
Bruce ALWAYS believes it's right and proper for bosses to rip the faces off the little guys to preserve the sanctity of an abstraction. Sez Bruce, "The government might have to BORROW! That's too HORRIBLE, that cannot stand!"
Guess what? The public and private sectors in the US and 'elsewhere' have already lent-borrowed hundreds of trillions of dollars. Good grief. They would lend-borrow hundreds of trillions MORE if they could do so!
Here's another theory:
Consider Keynes' economic approach: incentives to dis-hoard (spend) and government borrowing to take the place of consumer demand (consumption). Hoarding is the 'paradox of thrift' at the scale that effects diminished demand which in turn constrains employment ... incentive to hoard, etc.
The incentive to dis-hoard is negative real interest rates: ZIRP, QE (restructuring maturity curve), mortgage subsidies, direct support for asset markets, POMO ... so is tax on deposits! It is a form of negative real interest rates. It's the same as negative 6-10% return on investment due to inflation. Pure Keynes ... I'm sure every single EU establishment economist including Bernanke signed off on it.
Where the euro-bosses split with Keynes:
- They couldn't have a public discussion about the policy in advance or there would be no possibility of implementing the it. People would bolt out of accounts and the banks would crash ... dis-hoarding run amok.
- There is no anti-cyclical 'artificial demand' because the entire banking-finance system is bankrupt, not just part of it. There is no return on the dis-hoarding, only an incentive to hoard more securely elsewhere, beyond the reach of the bosses. Dis-hoarding is a waste of time/counterproductive. It removes both collateral and liquidity from the banking system.
Just to make things worse, any artificial liquidity provision from the central banks is limited: the collateral for the liquidity is the deposits! The same deposits that are running out the door! There is no other collateral, that is why there is a crisis in the first place!
Bosses aren't idiots, they just don't have the tools to deal with the crisis we are enjoying right now! They try Keynes because that's what they learned in college. They should have read Wendell Berry instead ... the part about eating the seed corn.
Roosevelt took specie out of circulation in 1933-34, he added currency and depreciated the dollar. The outcome was a 100% percent increase in US economic activity ... the banking system was rescued. Some now might disagree with this strategy but the bulk of Americans at the time agreed that gaining a better economy in exchange for a modest amount of gold in the custody of defunct banks ... was a good trade.
No such trade is in place in Cyprus or elsewhere in the EU. After this round of defaults there will be the next and the next ... that is if the system does not fall apart before. Europe is bankrupt, the real criminals are the bankers, not the Russians.
The only possible solution is stringent energy conservation. Instead of getting rid of people's money, get rid of the cars, instead. As it is, the continent is being de-carred by the citizens being thrown into grinding poverty and the stealing what isn't bolted down.
"the real criminals are the bankers, not the Russians"
Agreed.
Finally we agree, but your leaving out the new deal, which was a first and foremost help to the banks, and collecting future revenue to be spent by gvt officials. The growth you speak of came at the expense of WWII, which was financed by mostly with private money people who survived, or created, the stock mkt crash.
Good article Bruce I like the theory.
I'd rather think that they have just run out of options, can't print, can't get help, and the only thing left is to just steal money. This is the first ding. Will Cyprus be OK after the first ding? How long will the fix from the first ding last? RECALCULATING.....
If mega money is so careful, why was it so easy for hated drug lords to launder money with HSBC and why did they get away with violating mega US laws, sanctions when caught repeatedly? I don't buy one has to hide money, stay at 3 stars hotels, when Ol Hatcheto from MX can launder with HSBC without consequence, certainly 5 star hotels arent going to do you in.
What is described here as an explanation is a total bullshit. There are two reasons why they did not want to go for big accounts only.
1. It would have been perceived as a blunt anti-Russian move.
2. They played a standard game of good cop-bad cop by allowing the local authorities to make the cosmetic changers and present themselves as protectors of "small guy".
Make no mistake:EU wants Russian mafia out of Cyprus. ECB will provide unlimited liquidity if Russians start withdrawing all of their funds. The reason is quite obvious: Cyprus gas will allow Europe to diversify somewhat from Russian gas dependance.
What you're describing is the Swiss system. Typically you have a large cash account, one or more investment accounts, and one or more of such card accounts. You don't need to manually log in with your secure code every time you need to refill the card. You have an agreement that allows your bank to do that automatically.
Yes the Cypriot banks offer the same, but the scale of Cyprus offshore banking is itsy bitsy teeny weeny compared to Switzerland. Besides Cyprus not having an exactly solid as rock reputation it is now part of the EU and you can't really hide there like you used to be able. The banks are obliged to ID beneficial owners of all accounts and those IDs can be accessed by legal authorities. Some people of course lie and have stooges pretend to be beneficial owners on their behalves, but if you're going to do that you can do it anywhere.
Most of the non-resident money in Cyprus is in corporate accounts, not personal offshore banking accounts.
@Bruce- I assume the whole system is horribly corrupt because a insolvent bank should be seized just like the FDIC does to small banks nearly every Friday. Since the stock and bondholers in these Cypriot banks have not been wiped out, and instead depositers have been fleeced, I'm wondering which rich guys are fighting whichother rich guys.
Fleecing insured depositors, even if it is mostly hot money, seems like an act of war against Cyprus....ok, you won't play by our rules, you whole population will suffer, while we still protect stock and bondholders.
Also, fleecing insured depositors is a great way to pull further trust from system, leading to bank runs, deflation etc. Obvioulsy someone wants this,as you say, they are not stupid.
What is really going on?
Bruce, you have some things right... the 50K credit card for instance. But mega-money is very careful not to show ostentatious spending. Think three star hotel nor five star.
For movement of mega sums, the cleanest path is through BIS... so clean you would never think of it but the easiest path for 8,9, 10 figure amounts.
El wrongo. The highest volume of laundering there is runs right through Israel, where the business may be dirty but the money is always clean.
etresoi,
Care to say more. Why all the secrets.
Thanks for expaining how it works Bruce.
ditto.
hmm..
Suppose i opened a black account on a DOD contract i have, and then i access the money in a foreign country in order to contribute that money to the politician who gave me that contract. SCOTUS interprets the law in order to further hide my activity. i rinse and repeat under various names and faces, until the UST is missing 1T$, which was about the cost of an off balance sheet war (some saying 6T$ now) and then the economy crashes, after a loyal bureaucrat does his duty. After the crash the loyal bureaucrat dutifully reflates bank assets first, and lets the main economy wander thorugh the desert. The new community organizer president who wants to manage well, can't seem to.
Now there is a lot of (stolen) money parked out of sight, and the community organizer is starting to look over the books and he smells a rat. But before he can go to work on those American offshore bank accounts, the CIA pulls a fast one on the Russians, who are doing the same thing. He sets up a small bank in Cypress to take the fall. Now the Russians looks bad, corrupt and venal like always, no one would dare compare American oligarchs to them.
And of course the hot {foreign} money seeks out the dollar and the NYSE gets flight to safety levitation. Everyone fucking knows about it including old Fed Chief Greenswizzle, who declares stocks to be way undervalued, {as though he might know} Word leaks out ahead of the move, and stocks go parabolic for no rational reason.
Community organizer president forgets all his problems and begins to call the DOW with Maria Bartiromo enthusiasm. Guess our debt ceiling problems are over, we just stole the money from the Russians.
The small guys had and have the chance to vote for a government that prevents all the black money coming in
What's NEXT? Is it legal for a financial entity to close its doors for an unspecified time and open at will? what if i had a prearranged appointment with my friendly local bank manager to close on a mortgage in limassol tomorrow? what if i lost out due to the emergency grey swan closure of said bank resulting in late fees etc? what if the €99k i was using as a down deposit in my calculations was suddenly worth only €90k? would feel much better if Ben flew Timmy G down there to FIX this mess. Timmy your country needs you!
Cyprus is since long a wooden stick in the flesh of Eurolands banking industry. A left over from UKs colonial past. A financial no mans land offiacially but controlled by the City of London. The ideal place for the real dirty money. The Russians, oh the pour pour Russian oligarchs. Uk has to protect them. Whether Euroland is paying or London. Its that simple. Since Cyprus was since centuries the show from UK, why should Euroland pay now anything at all. Its clearly the UKs responsibility. See this very interesting link connecting Cyprus and other unregulated banking places with the City of Londodn. . Gets really intersting from page 2 on:
http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2013/04/mysterious-residents-one-hyde-...
As I wrote Cyprus was controlled till now by the UK in alliance with the US. What is happening now is a simple system change. Cyprus is moving away from the fraudulent Anglo-Saxon banking scheme and is becoming part of ECB controlled territory. hu, hu hu . Nothing to worry about. The City of London and Wall Street do have still many other places comparable to Cyprus.
But the UK wants to make this as hard as possible and tries to make it sour for Cyprus and Euroland. But Euroland just said to the UK: We have enough of your games which are now already lasting years in Cyprus and do lead to nothing. Pack your things and take your black Russian money to London what is left. This is our offer, the rest is your problem.
Anyhow no sane person was holding a savings account in a Cyprus bank. Only big time speculators holding wealth which is anyhow no wealth anymore its just numbers on toilet paper sheets. Eurolands offer is now on the table. Take it or leave it. The next offer will be zero 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
I also think that one of the motivations was to force these money out of tax havens and back onshore to taxable jurisdictions.
That is why all the world officials were behind it. They were slapping the account of tax cheats.....and in effect saying when we find you we are going to make is painful for you and make you think twice about taking your money off-shore.
Bruce,
If you keep penning articles like this, you will end up in the timeout corner with the other bad posters like Simon Black. You are well on your way.
Silly me! 1000 articles over 4 years; millions of Zero Hedge readers, and all this time I thought Tyler Durden was the editor.
Check the stats on this article. 10k odd readers, 150 comments. About 1.5% of readers make a comment. This is typical for most Zero Hedge articles, and also for other emags. If you think you are a majority, think again.
Those that are regular readers know that I try to communicate with folks who ask questions or challenge me. I think that is part of my "job" as a writer. I don't think you'll find any other contributors who do that to the extent that I do.
So I like contributors, all of them. But never once have I been intimidated by anyone. Including you.
bk
Intimidation... Not hardly. Internet tough, no. My point was made below; there was little effort and no substance to the article. 1000 + articles, sums it up nicely - Quantity over Quality. I certainly don't want to edit you. I get annoyed when you got a nice bated hook of a title and I get reeled in for nothing. After reviewing some 100+ comments to the article, I would say I was well within the majority of contributors, disappointed. Nixon and you might believe the silent majority to have a different opinion, but when a sample size of 100 plus is taken, one finds that the standard deviation isn't that far off.
I will give you this, you respond and interact better than any other author.
Regards in quality.
An uncle was shot down over Germany WW2, and was captured. They were marching down the road to the Stalag, while the Gestapo was marching some CC prisoners the other way. Of course the Americans had no idea what was going on. One of the CC prisoners fell down in the road, the German officer shot him in the head, where all the US flyers could get a good look.
Dear uncle took it all personally, which was the purpose of the macabe theatre. The Germans were losing the war, they didn't want to abuse the American prisoners but they had to discourage escape, and anything these Americans would do to make them spend more of their resources keeping the POWs in line.
And maybe the new Global Monetary Fascists aren't above making an example of a little hot money, even if some poor innocent people lose out. There's good guys and bad guys, and bad theatre, but the mechanics involved in making a global public example of some savers, mostly victims, seems like the least of the problem here.
Leo: Miss me now?
I enjoyed Bruce's article. Didn't realize all the work involved in being a theif. Thought the whole point of thievery was not to have to work but appears a whole lotta noble upstanding proper folk are involved in the theivin' bidness as their day jobs. I enjoy it when the crooks can't even depend on each other and keep wondering who's gonna get the job of being Franz Ferdinand this time around. Us minions don't make good Franzes... gotta be some hoity toity bastid.
I'll say one thing for Bruce K : he is providing a lot of animation about a dead horse being flogged.
This Cyprus thingie is dead meat; but the real issue is now the tug of war between the Merkel-Draghi put and the private oligarchy fear that their hot/unsavoury/legit/tax havenly money in Eurozone can be hit by a Stinger wealth tax zinger out of nowhere; launched by your very ally!
Wowie ! We are in an Iraq movie of GWB vintage where it was well known that the US army allied troops were your worst enemies in combat zone. Collateral damage was their middle name!
"Oups, had to do that, you were too close to those Saddam sunni Apaches! This is war...."
Merkel could not have said it better; but she will only fire after the Cyprus parliament says : "go ahead I have their asses lined up like sitting ducks!"
"Ach so! Now it is legit! Next we move to Spain...Those Rajoy boys are so, how do you say it...bis zur Unkenntlichkeit verstümmelt."
Ok Bruce,
I guess you need to run around screaming like your hair's on fire about killing and dismembering bankers to preface any remarks about why they're doing what they're doing to make it palatable to the groupthinkers.
I'm thinking it could be a ploy to get Cyprus to reject a bailout and go their own way and if they do accept haircuts then they get to kick the can for cheap but put the austerity drive in full gear for the rest of the piigs to toe the line. The hot money angle may be for appearances sake.
My Magic 8 Ball keeps coming up with 'hard to say right now' since I'm not privy to the mutterings of the Troika Witches.
It still looks like a pound of stupid no matter how you slice it.
at this point, it doesnt really matter if money in any bank account is hot or not. not that since 2008 everybody did not have plenty of time to take their savings out of the hofjuden run fraud called fractional reserve central banking. for the last 2000 years, the money changers have had a nearly perfect track record of theft, usury and deception. only total shmucks can leave their savings with these sheisters. it's a con that everybody should be familiar with. those that fail in the "due diligence" department deserve to lose everything to these crooks. victimhood is the prerogative of shmucks who think that bank accounts and money deposited in bank accounts is some untouchable private and personal property. it is not. effectively, you exchange property rights (to your money) for a claim on principal + future gains by loaning your money for interest: http://tinyurl.com/cner4my . those that do not know the difference will be sorry.
Did someone steal Bruce's ID?
I have never seen such rubbish posted in back to back articles on here....EVER.
Judging from the absolute mindless parroting of the mainstream financial media, complete with the ludicrous color of law scapegoating of nebulous "Russian mob" accounts, I'm pretty sure Joe W. hacked Bruce's account to post these articles.
LOL
Leo hacked into BK's account
It appears BK has become a shill for the Banksters. How much are they paying you to post this drivel Bruce?
I can not stand how Bruce started out by WRONGLY categorizing the backlash against his position by stating, "A central criticism of the decision to seize a portion of the bank accounts in Cyprus is that the "bite" hits small guys who have accounts with a balance of less than E100k."
Holy Shit, this isn't about account size it's about theft.