False Positives: A Podcast on Financial Discrimination & De-banking

What would you do if you were suddenly cut off from all your bank accounts? You cannot pay for anything anymore, and you cannot really get answers as to why it happened. 

And how would you feel if you found out that the decision to cut you off from your money was in part made by an algorithm?

Banks have to use automated systems to monitor their transactions and customers to fight against money laundering and financing of terrorism. But sometimes, those systems go astray, leading to people’s bank accounts being blocked or closed. 

That is happening to a lot of customers across Europe: small business owners, NGOs, religious organizations, migrants, political refugees... even politicians. There could be thousands of victims, according to data released in some countries. 

This phenomenon is called de-banking. It can happen because of a semi-automated decision-making process involving algorithms and Artificial Intelligence. When mistakes are made by these systems, they are called “false positives.”

False positives − a podcast series produced by AlgorithmWatch and the international news agency Agence France-Presse – will take you on a journey across Europe. From Spain, to France and the UK, from Turkey to Germany and Poland, we talked to those who battled to have mistakes overturned, and industry insiders who’ll lift the lid on how and why this is happening.

Episodes

The three episodes were released 1, 2, and 3 January 2025. Find all episodes here or on your favorite podcast platform.

Episode #1 Banking, by Kafka 

Atilio Andrade, in Spain, and Koffi Agodjro, in France, have something in common: Their bank accounts were closed, and they fought an administrative battle. We investigated their case, and found that their story was just the tip of the iceberg. In some instances, automated systems had a significant impact. 

• Episode 1 (via Acast)
• Release date: 1 January 2025

Episode #2 Mass Surveillance

One way or another, financial actors are required by law to monitor their customers to fight money laundering. That means we are all under surveillance. Even high profile politicians get tangled up in this monitoring network. Insiders take us behind the scenes of the surveillance machinery, powered sometimes by automated systems. For a good cause?

• Episode 2 (via Acast)
• Release date: 2 January 2025

Episode #3 No refuge 

What if banks had to enforce laws passed by authoritarian leaders against their political opponents? Dystopian as it might sound, this is already happening in the European Union. Data brokers collect accusatory information from refugees and dissidents online. Such information is used by banks to assess their clients' risk profiles. Should the banks comply? Can they be trusted to make the right decision? 

• Episode 3 (via Acast)
• Release date: 3 January 2025

About the podcast

• Host: Alex Cadier
• Editing by Camille Kauffmann
• Music by Nicolas Vair
• Reporting and research by Pablo Jimenez Arandia, Naiara Bellio, Nicolas Kayser-Bril, Yasir Gökce, Mayra Russo, Mathilde Saliou for AlgorithmWatch; Benoît Pelegrin, Burcin Gercek and Michaëla Cancela-Kieffer for AFP.
• Translations: Nathalie Handel, Joshua Melvin, Jean-Marc Mojon, Gregory Viscusi, Christopher Wright, Joseph Schmid, Phillip Hazlewood 
• Editors in chiefs: Naiara Bellio for AlgorithmWatch and Michaëla Cancela-Kieffer for Agence France-Presse

AlgorithmWatch is a non-profit organization based in Berlin and Zurich that fights to ensure that use of algorithms and Artificial Intelligence benefits the many, not just the few. 

Agence France-Presse, a leading global news agency present in 150 countries, contributed with additional research and fact-checking in the UK, France and Turkey, as well as the production of the podcast.