Israeli Court Says Bank Is Allowed To Refuse Bitcoin-Related Deposits

A judge from the Tel Aviv District Court has ruled that Union Bank is allowed to refuse to deposit funds of a customer whose origins come from Bitcoin (BTC).

According to Calcalist, the customer filed a lawsuit against the bank institution, arguing that such refusal was “unreasonable.”

Case Background

The case happened in 2014 when the person made some Bitcoin purchases from the bank account.

In 2017, the crypto holder started to trade such digital assets by selling them and splitting them into many transfers less than NIS 50,000 ($15,530). The bank noted that such a maneuver was allegedly made to hide the transfers, raising the red flags from Union Bank.

However, the customer claimed that the number of deposits was due to the way he sold the cryptocurrencies rather than hiding them from the radar, and it was performed at a random pace.

Not Random Transfers At All…

Judge Limor Bibi commented:

“In this case, I believe that the applicant’s conduct led to a crisis of confidence in his relationship with the bank, which may justify the bank’s refusal to provide the service to the applicant (…) As for these transfers, I did not find to accept the applicant’s testimony that only randomly, resulting from the trading volume, a transfer of a total amount of NIS 450,000 was split without less than 14 transfers, all of which is the amount of less than NIS 50,000, and I believe that this is a deliberate split, which, as claimed by the bank, is intended to thwart the bank’s ability to monitor activity and discern it in the current means at its disposal.”

Israeli banks are known for their strict policies on handling risks related to crypto operations. As FXEmpire reported recently, Hapoalim Bank, a leading Israeli bank, filed to dismiss Esther Freeman’s claims after rejecting the $320K profit she made from holding Bitcoin since 2013.