So last year, my husband's brother died suddenly and as a consequence, at the end of the year, my husband received small-ish inheritance. The money was deposited directly into our CS account from the Netherlands.

So about 6 weeks later, we were in the COOP shopping and neither of our cards - Maestro or VISA were accepted. My husband went to the ATM and it kept his card. Since it was a Saturday, we couldn't get anyone at the bank who could really help us although it was quite clear we had money in all accounts. Fortunately, we had another source of funds too.

So the following Monday, we started to find out what was going on. Apparently we were supposed to have received a letter (except we could never find the letter) some weeks earlier which asked us to detail the source of the funds. Apparently there are some random checks when money is deposited into a bank account - and this wasn't huge money - but big enough to raise eyebrows. I guess we were suspected money launderers, taking in Dutch currency. What ever. So we sent off the required documents and everything was straightened out, but.......

My big problem with CS was that they could not get their story straight. Did they send the letter a month earlier or just before they cut off access? I found a letter sent the day before we were cut off, but nothing earlier. We talked to them almost daily during the week and they were first going to give us access back to the maestro, but then it turned out they had to send new ones. Which they did.... but it was just annoying.

It was definitley an example where there was a lot of confusion, and there was a fair amount of CYA going on. It was very frustrating, and it's taught us to have more than one bank account. Which we have yet to deal with... sigh.

Well, asking for proof of the money source is not unusual; anti-money laundering laws are pretty strict. It sounds pretty shady that they sent out the request a day before blocking the funds, but to play devil's advocate, it could be something as simple as a mail boy dropping the outbound post so that it didn't make it to the Post. Never chalk up to maliciousness what you can ascribe to incompetence...

Pretty much standard for quite a few countries now, the little people us, have to prove where we got our few Francs for otherwise they want to take it or tax it or both.

When we get any money coming in from abroad we scan and send the relevant documents to head them off at the pass so to speak.

We just won a court case in another country which started about a year before we came to Switzerland, whilst it is going to be easy to prove where the money came from it is going to be interesting to see if we can stop them taxing the money, especially as there was 8.5% interest on the money for almost 5 years.

We sold our house in the US in 2007, money was wired here without question. Guess things have changed in the last few years - well we'll send them the info if we ever get another influx of cash.

Anything about 10k in a single transfer you need to be able to prove source of funds.

Note i say "able" as this is not an obligation, it all depends on the various official who sees it and it will also take into consideration the previous transactions on the account

Money laundering from a Dutch bank account... even the Swiss should now this is very unlikely.

Source of Funds is always essential, however is the difference that the money from the inheritance was wired to you from a different party where the money from the property sales was wired to you either from yourselves (your US a/c) or from a recognised property agent? The other thing is, with property transactions, the bank can handle it and append SOF information to the transaction.

Well usually they put a provisional block on the funds until they've ascertained the source of the money. Otherwise the more criminally inclined would have the opportunity to transfer the money elsewhere.

As to money laundering in the Netherlands, there are plenty of shady (or sunny?) places connected to the Netherlands...

actually quite a bit of money laundering happens through the netherlands. dutch NVs are a popular asset pooling vehicle.

With the house, it was an attorney. With the inheritance it was actually my father in law, executor of the estate. I was told also it was a random check. But no matter. I just think CS was sloppy in their execution and needed to cya. It happens. So anyway, lesson learned.

I had a very similar experience with UBS. They lost the copy they made of my passport and two months after my arrival gave me a call on a Friday that they need to make a new one. I went there directly and they copied the passport and Ausländerausweis. However, my card was locked on the Saturday. I was sitting without cash in a (back then) foreign country. I went there the first thing on the following Monday morning and the lady told me that this was "absolutely correct" to do so... I explained her several times that they already had the new copy and if they were not able to stop the process to lock my card on Friday anymore, they should have told me so when I visited their bank and let me withdraw some money. After I demanded an apology for three times, she put some UBS branded writing set in my hand and walked away without a word. Aparently, a low earning idiot like me was not worth it... today I am earning four times the salary from back then - and I do not bank with them anymore.