HSBC fined $1.,900,000,000.00...

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HSBC 'to pay $1.9bn' in US money laundering

HSBC has admitted its money laundering controls have been too lax

The deal could be announced as early as Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reports.

It follows the announcement of a similar but much smaller settlement with UK-based Standard Chartered bank, which will pay $300m in fines for violating US sanction rules.

The cases are seen as part of a crackdown on money laundering and sanctions violations being led

The $1.9bn sum in the HSBC settlement is expected to include around $1.25bn forfeited by HSBC -the largest amount ever paid out in such a case - and a $650m civil fine.

The bank will also admit charges of violating bank secrecy laws and the Trading With the Enemy

The settlement had been widely expected following a report by the US Senate, published earlier this

The report suggested HSBC accounts in Mexico and the US were being used by drug barons to

It cited examples including the transfer of $7bn between HSBC's Mexican and US subsidiaries between 2007 and 2008, made despite Mexico's reputation as a centre of drug smuggling.

It also said HSBC regularly circumvented restrictions on dealings with Iran, North Korea, and other

HSBC admitted its money laundering controls were not strong enough following the Senate report.

On Tuesday the London-based multinational announced it had appointed a former US official to

Bob Werner was previously the head of the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) -the agency responsible for enforcing the US sanctions on countries including Iran.

He will be responsible for beefing up HSBC's anti money laundering and sanctions compliance

It is unclear what impact the case will have on HSBC's business. The bank is the biggest in Europe by market capitalisation, and made pre-tax profits of $12.7bn for the first six months of 2012.

So another delightful example of the US pissing over British interests; first BP then SC now HSBC in a fine that dwarfs any other ever issued, not disputing that HSBC did wrong but such an amount is unheard of and would almost certainly would never have been handed down to a US bank.
Take culprits like BT, CSFB, Saloman and Morgan Stanley all of which have been implicated in equally dubious scandals, most prominently BT who quite happily sold exploding financial implements to their customers loosing them hundreds of millions if not billions and Saloman who's operations crushed various countries currencies notably New Zealands and Britains, the fines to these companies, a couple of million if they were having a terrible day, more often than not a couple of directors would be fined a few hundred thousand dollars

Has anyobdy else noted this rather irritating pattern with the US regulators in not only going after foreign companies more vigerously but actively trying to squash them...

thoughts and views!

Reply 1

i.am.lost

I have no idea whether US regulators are indeed harsher with foreign corporations, but if that is the case then I can kind of understand why they are - even if I don't agree with it. I suppose they don't look too kindly on entities that pay very little if any tax to the US government and create added competition for American companies, so if they're not playing by the rules then of course the government is going to crack down on them. It stops America becoming a free-for-all.

Reply 2

ChemistBoy

HSBC was actively breaking US sanctions (as was Standard Chartered). This is completely different to the behaviour you've quoted for those US banks. It may be no worse than what the US banks were doing, but it isn't the same and the US takes breaking its sanctions on Iran, in particular, very seriously clearly.

HSBC fined $1.,900,000,000.00...

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