On Saturday I tried sending money from my main bank account at Mitsubishi UFJ Bank to my younger brother back in Latin America through WesternUnion.

This is a transaction I have been doing every month for the last 2 years. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that through the years the process has become more cumbersome. Now you need to fill out a form each time you want to take money out of Japan indicating the purpose of the transfer, your relationship with the recipient, the origin of the funds etc.

This time, since last Saturday the transfer trigger a "flag" on the system. They locked me out of the Online Banking as you can see on the picture below. Since something similar happened last month, and had to spent half day calling customer service so they let the transfer through and unlock my account, this time I was really upset and decided to go to the bank office and ask for a detailed explanation. They refused to give an explanation, but hinted at it's not their policy but at country level. I had to call customer service and now I am waiting their call back. A few minutes ago I tried to use my cash card, I realized they disabled my cash card at the bank as well, since it was working yesterday just fine. Now I am really angry, since basically I have no access to my savings in the country. Luckily I must of my savings are abroad since I have been seeing how Japan is making more difficult take money out of the country.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

https://preview.redd.it/djfw86nrre4e1.png?width=645&format=png&auto=webp&s=31ecf54f7006c3471bfa3530de188cc47c97c481