The Big Take
Debanking Is a Confusing Nightmare. It’s at Risk of Getting Worse
Trump’s regulators are reshaping rules, potentially making it harder for banks to eject clients over suspicious behavior.
John Ghazvinian at his parents’ home in Lisbon, Portugal.
Photographer: Goncalo Fonseca/BloombergJohn Ghazvinian was helping his parents clear out their life savings and move to Portugal when their checking account at Citigroup Inc. vanished from his screen. As weeks and months passed, the bank kept it out of reach and refused to specify why.
Ghazvinian, the former director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Middle East Center, had stumbled into a Kafkaesque corner of the US financial system that has confounded customers, industry leaders and even President Donald Trump. The Oxford-trained academic couldn’t figure out what to do.