Those are the money laundering / antiterrorism bits, which are pretty hard to trigger.
The reality is that online banks rely on "AI" for their basic anti-fraud efforts much more than real banks do, and these are the results: arbitrary shutdowns and no customer service. But hey, I'm sure doing customer service wit ChatGPT will solve it (/s).
It really isn't that hard to trigger to them, the UK Sanctions List[0] is huge, and contains quite a lot of broad descriptions that doubtless result in people getting swept up in automated checks of the list. Is your name Ali Khalili? Cool, you're on the sanctions list, because that's literally all the identifying factors provided for an Iranian general. I'm sure once it flags the bank will reasonably quickly take a look at your details and realise you're not in fact an Iranian general, but that will take time, and in the meantime your account has been frozen.
But that's not only online banks; my brick-and-mortar bank did the same thing, froze my account until I provided papers (they already had, just updated). I went to the closest physical branch and they told me 'blah dep flagged this, nothing we can do'.
Police aren’t going to help you with bank issues, and the courts don’t care if there’s a local branch or not, as the hypothetical lawsuits are filed against HQ . It’s just not true.
It makes people like OP _feel_ better because they have someone to yell at, but it doesn’t help.
Heads up that all financial institutions in the US, regardless of if they're regulated as a bank or not, are subject to following KYC/AML laws. Bank's are just as much, if not more subject to scrutiny in this area.
You can't use a bank to skirt KYC/AML laws, sorry. And you have a similar amount of recourse (little to none) if you run afoul of them.
The reality is that online banks rely on "AI" for their basic anti-fraud efforts much more than real banks do, and these are the results: arbitrary shutdowns and no customer service. But hey, I'm sure doing customer service wit ChatGPT will solve it (/s).