The conspiracy theories run high here.

There is a bug here, and "network congestion" is in fact not a bad way to put it without going through the whole technical explanation.  Remember that MtGox don't use bitcoind to process bitcoin transactions other than for block validation.  It just doesn't scale to the amount of addresses they have (primarily) and transactions they have to keep track of.

Sometimes transactions take a very long time to confirm.  E.g. due to sending a small transaction without fees (user error), or (the BUG) trying to use a coinbase transaction with less than 100 confirmations.  Sometimes transactions fail to confirm for reasons I can't explain either.  You can get all og MtGox's unconfirmed transactions which are at least 2 hours old from the URL below, and use it to verify my claims.  It is updated every 20 minutes: https://data.mtgox.com/api/0/bitcoin_tx.php

When a transaction isn't confirmed after ~24 hours, MtGox tries to solve it by issuing a high fee transaction to itself where it spends one or more of the inputs of the unconfirmed transaction.  This will invalidate the unconfirmed transaction.  When the invalidating transaction has 6 confirmations, MtGox will issue a new transaction for the withdrawal, and this usually confirms at once.  But due to the coinbase bug, this may also be a troublesome transaction.  (The reason why support will ask you to wait 24 hours.)

Usually the list of unconfirmed transactions is short (~100 micropayment transactions with no fees).  This is rebroadcasted in longish intervals, but a rebroadcast doesn't help much because miners don't even forward those transactions with no fees.  Much less mine them.  When the list get very long, this becomes a bottleneck ("network congestion").  And it does for several reasons.  The main reason is the coinbase bug (known for a long time, and they should rally get this fixed), which leads to cancellation transactions, and when the cancellation transaction doesn't confirm, there will be another, etc.

So this is just a bug, not a form of capital controls.  AFAIK everyone have received their BTC withdrawal eventually.  But I am sure you conspiracy theorists won't let facts affect you.

On the other hand it is Sunday today.  Sunday is MagicalTux's coding day.  Let's hope fixing this bug is on top of his TODO list.

You can get the full order book from the API.  Currently there are more than 5k offered at over 300 USD.

Bitstamp had 10k asks as well not long ago.  Far from that now.  When the price goes up, it is normally because the asks are being bought so there are less left to buy.  I assumed most people knew this..  21k BTC left in asks on MtGox now.  Total.

Ehm..  Did you notice the scale on the left?

Some pools, e.g. Eligius, use the coinbase tx to send rewards to miners.  A miner can get the reward sent directly to an exchange, but outputs from the coinbase tx won't be valid as input until it has has at least 100 confirmations.

Most likely not.  When that happens, you will get an error message.

Most likely there was a problem with the transaction itself (as created by MtGox).  MtGox tries to fix this automagically after a while (a rather long while, 24 hours I think) by double spending on of the inputs, thus invalidating the original transaction.  When the double spending transaction has six confirmations, it will try to send again using new inputs.  This has happened quite often recently.  I haven't figured out what the real bug is.  Their transactions seem perfectly OK to me.

You can fetch all transactions which has gone unconfirmed for more than 2 hours through the API here: https://data.mtgox.com/api/0/bitcoin_tx.php

Most of their profit has either been seized by DHS (5.1 million USD) or stolen by Peter Vessenes (5.3 million USD).  Peter Vessenes stole user deposits, but MtGox has credited their users in full and are trying to get their money back from Peter Vessenes.

Almost 5 weeks.

There is a misspelling in the letter.  It says "Thank you for using Chase" where it should say "Fuck you for using Chase".

I doubt it is illegal to place third party fees (e.g. bank fees) on the user requesting the withdrawal.  Does your bank cover all intermediate bank fees for you when doing international transfers?  The ToS agreement is between you and MtGox in Japan, btw.  Not MtGox in Delaware or Poland or whatever.

Is an edited screenshot worth more than my word?  I obviously have to edit out all personal information, and while I'm at it I may edit anything.  Which I will be accused of anyway, so I'm not going to bother.  Either you trust me or you don't.  I am buying btw (EUR or USD, price here).

The SEPA queue is just below 5 weeks now.  Don't think it has been up to 6, at least not since June.

31.4k BTC (36.7k now) is what's left in asks in the order book, and this number decreases because people have been buying a lot of BTC lately.  You may have noticed the price increase.  When you buy BTC, the BTC you bought will disappear from the order book (the ask side) and go into your balance.  The total balance isn't public.  It is obvious that the amount in bids have increased as well.  It as below 11 million a week ago.  I doubt people have deposited 2.5 million USD to MtGox the last few days, so I guess this number is taken from public bids in the order book.  You probably know that people can keep an USD balance on MtGox without placing it all in public bids, so this is a sign of people shifting from selling BTC to buying BTC, which is typical for a rally.  You can see the same happening on all exchanges.

USD are leaving, just very very slowly.  USD is a convertible currency, and many people convert their USD to EUR or JPY and withdraw through that route.  3 million EUR (~4 million USD) is leaving each month via SEPA.  JPY comes in addition to this, and is likely more.  At the same time the order book (bids) doesn't seem to shrink much.  This fascinates me.  It should be possible to empty MtGox in four months on EUR withdrawals alone, and much less when you add JPY.  Either new deposits are coming in, or there are a lot of balance on MtGox which is not currently visible in bids.  Same thing probably for asks.

Correct.  I received an EUR withdrawal today. 

MtGox are very careful of what they say in public due to the ongoing case with the DHS and the process with FinCen.  It is a delicate situation.  I am sure relevant government representatives get all the information they request.  Care to tell what your question was?

It is difficult for US customers.  The problems were created by the US government in the first place (no more redeemable codes for fiat, no more LR, no more Dwolla, etc), so please complain to your government/congressman/president/neighbour.  MtGox have very limited options to transfer USD, and have to be very careful not to abuse their options because abuse may interfere with their application to become a payment service.  It is possible to make a express manual withdrawal for a 5% bank fee (very limited, available at MtGox's discression), or just wait it out.  Trade while you wait, and you may make more USD to withdraw when it is back to normal.

Thanks!  My own 8k SEPA withdrawal from September 11th changed to pending today.  I will have it in my account tomorrow.  On schedule.  The EUR volume between September 11. and October 4. has been lower than normal.  I expect MtGox to process up to two days of withdrawals per day for the next week or so, catching up two weeks of withdrawals in one week. 

Note: This is just a forecast.  I am not affiliated with MtGox, and have no other basis for my prediction than public trade information.

True, but i doubt "user pays fees to third parties" is illegal.  To murder someone is illegal under most circumstances.  To pay a fee is not.  If paying fees is illegal, you may have a case against all Bitcoin exchanges and most banks as well.

Excuse?  This is just a fact, no excuse.  There is simply no reason for MtGox to lie about this, and I've heard people complaining about even higher bank fees for international wires.  I sell small amounts for PPUSD on #bitcoin-otc, and people buy seriously overpriced coins (mtgask + 10% + pp fees) to avoid even higher bank fees.

Why do you ask questions I already answered after the post you quoted, and multiple times before?

No, I am not affiliated with MtGox in any way more than you are.  Just finding facts and trying to help while keeping my feet on the ground.