Curved World

I’m in the process of trying to buy a house in Sheffield, four doors up from my sister. It’s a private sale; the current owner, a friend of hers, now lives in New Zealand and has let the place to a young couple, a self-employed garden designer and his girlfriend.

A week or two ago, when we got to the point in the transaction where the owner had let them know it was going ahead, my sister popped round to introduce herself and reassure them that, since they seemed to be good tenants, we would continue their contract on the same terms. They confessed that they had been a little worried about the impending change of landlord, especially since they had made some minor improvements to the property, and would ideally want to stay there for a few years until they could save up a deposit for a place of their own. In fact, if we didn’t mind, they’d like to do a bit more work on it. Would we consider, for example, going 50-50 on a fitted kitchen?

When my sister got home, the phone rang: it was the tenant. He just wanted to mention to her that for the last couple of months he had been making rent payments to the letting agent in cash. It was just that a company he’d done some work for had gone bankrupt and he hadn’t received money from them, though it did look  as though the problem would shortly be resolved, and then he would set up the standing order again. He’d be grateful if my sister wouldn’t mention this to his partner.

My sister, a debt counsellor by trade, wondered if we shouldn’t contact the letting agent to check this one out.

Then, on Wednesday night, she came home late to find a rotating blue light outside the couple’s house, along with what looked like a forensics van. Could it be drugs, or stolen goods, she wondered? The police wouldn’t tell her much, but then she sent me a story from BBC South Yorkshire: our friendly green-fingered prospective tenant is up before the beak on no less than 24 counts of armed robbery, across five counties, over the last two months.

On the same BBC South Yorkshire page, another headline says National debt helpline launches. I wonder if the two are connected – or not?

My 79-year-old mother, gladdened by the birth of her first granddaughter in February, decided to help little Kyria along by buying her a Children’s Bonus Bond as an investment in her future. My mum’s sister-in-law, of a similar age, kindly offered to chip in; together they put up £300 and sent off a cheque to the National Savings.

The National Savings asked her to prove who the baby girl was. Or rather, since Kyria was too young to be laundering money herself, required instead that her parent – me – provide proof of identity. They sent a list of documents for me to produce: I followed their instructions to the letter, and mailed them a recent statement from my British bank, along with copies of my passport and driving licence verified by my boss, who, like my mother, my aunt, myself, and Kyria, is a British citizen, from birth, with no criminal record.

Apparently this wasn’t enough. Nearly a month later I received a letter from the National Savings, requiring not only me but my (American) wife to produce a further set of documents. These were to include a five-digit UK tax number (I’ve paid tax in the UK and never heard of this; Allison has never done so, and so was required instead to produce evidence of her date and place of birth). They were also to include letters for each of us from the income tax authorities of the United Arab Emirates (which has no income tax) and copies of our passports. These papers needed to be verified by our respective embassies. I did a bit of research and discovered that, quite apart from the several hours of our busy time wasted in getting to and from these locations and waiting in line (with screaming kids, in Allison’s case), this verification process would cost us about £60, or a fifth of the value of the bond my mother was proposing to buy (even without allowing for inflation, it would take us five years, at the interest rate on offer, to make back this sum). And all this was to be done, dusted, and back on their desks in Glasgow in less than three weeks.

No doubt the Mr. Bigs of the money-laundering world will find ways around, under, or through these regulations: forgery, placemen, front organizations. Little Kyria and her gran, though, can’t really afford to chuck away 60 quid feeding the paperwork monsters of the British regulatory system. How difficult do the authorities want to make it for a couple of old ladies to buy a modest nest egg for a newborn? And what are they supposed to do with the money instead – stuff it under the mattress?

I told this story to a colleague, and she sized it up neatly: the terrorists have won.