In Trump Era, New Zealand Banks Take Their Cue From US Treasury
The unexpected closure of a Palestinian Solidarity group’s bank account raises serious issues around who decides New Zealand banking policy. The action by Kiwibank to close PFLP Solidarity Aotearoa’s account was rationalised by the bank on the basis that the PFLP is a designated terrorist organisation. PFLP Solidarity Aotearoa is a solidarity campaign raising funds for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is not on New Zealand’s terrorism list. In fact George Habash, the PFLP’s founder, was referred to as “the conscience of the Palestinian revolution”. Resisting occupation is a right guaranteed under international law. Yet under US law virtually every Palestinian group that has resisted occupation is designated a terrorist entity. New Zealand banks are following US rather than New Zealand law in this respect. After queries were made to Kiwibank regarding the account’s closure, PFLP Solidarity Aotearoa was informed that there are online resources that will explain the bank’s action. After being pressed further for more specific information, the bank finally replied with a link to the US Department of Treasury. So the account was closed, not because PFLP Solidarity Aotearoa had breached any NZ law or banking regulation, but because New Zealand banks defer to US law. In an era when an increasingly belligerent and erratic US foreign policy is being foisted on the world, whether allies and beneficiaries, or opponents and competitors of US interests, it is a serious concern that US foreign policy is at the forefront in determining NZ bank policy. This is all the more concerning when the bank concerned is one hundred percent owned by the New Zealand state.
The fact that this matter should arise now, when the US is bankrolling “probable genocide” in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, is no coincidence. Were this issue not so contentious, with many western governments’ ongoing complicity with Israel’s actions being so out of step with public opinion, it might have gone unnoticed. But people the world over have refused to accept the Israeli government’s demand that any criticism of Zionism be treated as anti-semitism, and they are looking for ways to assist the Palestinian people, both on a humanitarian and political level. The refusal of US-based institutions to allow funds to enter Palestine, and the complicity of New Zealand banks in this policy, has a direct impact on the lives of people who are being systematically starved, shot, and ethnically cleansed every day, in full view of a horrified global public.
Someone in Kiwibank also leaked confidential customer information to a blogger. At 1.30pm on July 13th 2024, campaign coordinator Paul Hopkinson attempted to open the Kiwibank account for PFLP Solidarity Aotearoa, established to support its fight against the genocide in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The bank informed him that the account had been closed. Shortly afterwards, he learned that hours earlier, blogger, lawyer and recent Waitangi Tribunal appointee Philip Crump had posted on his Thomas Cranmer Twitter account that “I understand from a well-placed source that Kiwibank has now closed the bank account of a New Zealand group fundraising for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine… [and that] No funds were disbursed from the account to the PFLP”. Someone within Kiwibank had released these very specific details of the account to a blogger hostile to PFLP Solidarity Aotearoa.
Following intervention from the office of the Banking Ombudsman, Kiwibank has paid $750 in compensation to PFLP Solidarity Aotearoa after its account was closed and information concerning the account was leaked to the blogger.
The $750 paid by Kiwibank will be used to support the Palestinian struggle for independence.
John Edmundson