Gringotts / Malfoy Manor

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 163087

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Ceridwen" <ceridwennight at ...>
wrote:


> thursday:
> 1) Is there anything official on whether the Ministry can seize
> > Gringott's accounts or if the goblins would thumb their noses at
> > anyone who tried? 


> Ceridwen:
> Didn't Sirius have access to his account while he was on the run?  


Sydney:

He must have had access to cash, because he bought Harry his broom. 
Gringotts seems to me like a Swiss bank-- they ask no questions and
keep their client's secrets, which seems in character for the Goblins,
what little we've seen of them.  

A little googling about Swiss Banks provided this:

"These portions of the banking law have been interpreted, both in
practice and by the courts, to make it a serious offense to divulge
any information about a bank customer to a third party, including
official requests of foreign governments, except in some very special
and clearly defined situations".  Those 'situations' seem to be
criminal but it still seems to be difficult to impossible to seize the
assets of deposed dictators, Bin Laden, etc., so I guess a mere
mass-murderer suspect would be okay.

Some interesing background on Swiss bank secrecy here: 
http://switzerland.isyours.com/e/banking/secrecy/history.html

If the client doesn't contact the bank for longer than 10 years, the
account goes dormant but does not revert to the state or to anybody
else, it just sits there, from what I can see.  This is why dormant
accounts from the 30's and 40's are sometimes in the news today.  A
little about dormant account law here: 
http://switzerland.isyours.com/e/banking/dormant_accounts/index.html 

So if Sirius hadn't written a will, I think the house would have gone
to Bellatrix (or Regulus! if he's still alive), and his private money
would have sat in a vault basically for ever. 

-- Sydney, google queen