Tuesday, July 17, 2012

HSBC allowed money laundering that likely funded terror, organized crime

A "pervasively polluted" culture at HSBC allowed the bank to act as financier to clients moving shadowy funds from the world's most dangerous and secretive corners, including Mexico, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, according to a scathing U.S. Senate report issued on Monday.

The report [link to PDF here] which comes ahead of a Senate hearing on Tuesday, said large amounts of Mexican drug money was likely to have passed through the bank.

HSBC's U.S. division provided money and banking services to some banks in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh believed to have helped fund al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, according to an Al-Jazeera story on the report.

While the big British bank's problems have been known for nearly a decade, the Senate probe detailed just how sweeping the problems have been, both at the bank and at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a top U.S. bank regulator which the report said failed to properly monitor HSBC.
Read the rest here.

Banks are the enemy.

2 comments:

Jason said...

Eustace Mullins was writing about this bank's involvement in money laundering and smuggling operations decades ago. It was these types of operations that the bank was originally set up for. Why the news is breaking about it now, I have no idea, but I'd hazard a guess that it's not because of some great altruistic awakening within Congress.

Anastasia Theodoridis said...

I used not to believe you when you kept saying banks are the enemy. But they really are. Along with some others.