Severance26: I'm sorry, but you got it wrong on many levels:
- big corporations a DO more transfers than Gox on a daily basis. What about stock brokers? Forex exchanges? Wealth management businesses? Please, be serious.
- the Polish bank is not an "intermediary" bank. It is the main and only bank for SEPA deposits and SEPA withdrawals.
- that "shady exchange" located in "eastern europe" uses Unicredit, a MAJOR international bank. SEPA withdrawals take 2/3 days, not weeks. Big withdrawals too by the way, 5/6 figures no problem. And their volume is comparable to Gox.
- the name of its "unnamed CEO" is Nejc Kodric and that's public knowledge. Check his LinkedIn.
Again: all these delays just mean that Gox is in deep deep shit. Believing they are thieves is kinda stupid given their history, but believing that everything is OK and the risk is negligible is also terribly stupid and naive. Probably Gox is suffering LE harassment because of their past position as "the exchange" during the Silk Road time, probably they made bad choices and some mistakes too. Thinking all that is irrelevant "because they made SO much money in the past" is, again, incredibly naive.
We can agree to disagree, neither of us having actual knowledge of the goings on of ANY of these companies. All of the companies you mentioned however aren't flooded with looping arbitration transfers like Gox was leading up to current mess. That being said, I don't have physical evidence, so...
About the Polish bank. Not sure what you mean exactly. Your first and second statement contradict. Mt. Gox is a company based in Japan. They send fiat to Europe via the Polish bank, from a Japanese bank called Japan Net Bank. If you live have an account with that Polish bank, I suppose you are right that it is incorrect to call it intermediary. However if you forget that it is not the only bank in the process, then you lose sight of the restrictions placed on Gox by Japanese banks. Get my drift?
As for the other exchange. Bitstamp? You know more than I. I thought that it WASN't known, maybe that was BTC-e though. Sorry. I don't use other exchanges much, I live in Japan. But the bank's size does not speak to their KYC/AML policies, either.
I'm not sure what you consider "deep shit" to be. But I'm not sure I disagree with you anyway. As I said, I took a devil's advocate stance. Thanks for correcting my mistake about Bitstamp.