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http://english.capital.gr/News.asp?id=15....
Tuesday, 10 July 2012

WASHINGTON--A U.S. Senate panel said Monday it would release a report later this month on alleged money-laundering violations at HSBC Holdings PLC...

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Jul 11, 2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-11....

HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) will apologize at a July 17 U.S. Senate hearing for anti-money laundering controls that weren’t effective enough, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg News.

“We failed to spot and deal with unacceptable behavior,” Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver said in the note sent to employees yesterday, referring to the period between 2004 and 2010. “It is right that we be held accountable and that we take responsibility for fixing what went wrong.”...

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http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0718/today-i....
Wednesday, 18 July 2012

The Irish Independent reports that the Government faces huge embarrassment today after two key figures appointed to help clean up the Irish financial system were named in an explosive US investigation into global banking giant HSBC. Chairman of state-owned AIB David Hodgkinson, and Michael Noonan's top NAMA adviser Michael Geoghegan, are both named in a 330-page report that follows an investigation into HSBC by a US Senate subcommittee set up in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York.

HSBC is accused of "playing fast and loose with US banking rules" between 2004 and 2010 by US Senator Carl Levin, a key ally of US President Barack Obama, who chaired the team that published the report. Top NAMA adviser Michael Geoghegan was HSBC's most senior executive for almost the entire period now under investigation.

The current AIB chairman was the bank's chief operating officer between 2006 and 2008 and before that ran its Middle East business. Crucially, the damning report makes clear that both Michael Geoghegan and David Hodgkinson were aware of the major issues at the bank during the period under investigation, including HSBC's processing of billions of dollars worth of hidden deals for Iranian banks. Worryingly, the report puts Mr Hodgkinson at the centre of the controversial practice where Iranian deals were obscured during his term as a senior executive at the banks Middle East unit.

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http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0718/aibs-da....
Updated: 08:39, Wednesday, 18 July 2012

AIB chairman David Hodgkinson was mentioned in the Senate report in relation to what is called U-turn transactions involving Iran.

These were allowed by the US treasury up to 2008.

They were being used to allow US banks process dollar payments, involving Iran, but avoiding the country by starting and finishing the transaction elsewhere.

In 2005 and 2006, HSBC processed about 1,800 of these transactions transactions through a correspondent account at JP Morgan Chase.

The Senate report quoted an e-mail from the then HSBC Middle East Deputy Chairman David Hodgkinson, who wrote that HSBC's US unit was "unwilling to process them for reputational-risk reasons."

AIB says it has no concerns over the report.

A spokeswoman for the bank said that Mr Hodgkinson was not a person of interest in the inquiry and there was nothing for the bank to consider...

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http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/07/....
19/07/2012

Labour leader Ed Miliband has called on trade minister Stephen Green to make a statement in the House of Lords on his role in the HSBC money laundering scandal...

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/....
Saturday 21 July

Trade minister Lord Green is under intense scrutiny after it emerged that HSBC continued to operate hundreds of accounts with suspected links to Mexican drug cartels, even after Green and fellow executives were told by regulators that HSBC was one of the worst banks for money laundering.

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The Senate report quotes emails, copied to Green, that created alarm in the higher echelons of the bank. They show that in 2005 Green was alerted that HSBC had potentially breached sanctions relating to Burma and that its Mexico arm had fabricated its anti-money-laundering activity. More damningly, evidence is emerging that HSBC's lax controls continued to allow money laundering and other dubious transactions even after Green and his colleagues were made aware of the problems and pledged to take action...

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Despite these concerns, all 675 HSBC accounts that the CNBV suspected of money laundering, and had demanded that the bank close, remained open months later, in December 2008. The Senate report also said Green was briefed personally on HSBC's role facilitating transactions for Iranian banks and companies. Such transactions were subject to strict regulations imposed by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces American sanctions.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/....
Tuesday 17 July 2012

..HSBC's Mexican division comes in for particularly hard criticism.

According to the report it continued to do business with "casas de cambio" – money-changing businesses – years after its rivals had stopped on fears that they were fronts for drug-cartel money laundering.

The report says that the Mexico business had a branch in the Cayman Islands that in 2008 handled 50,000 client accounts and $2.1bn in holdings – but had no staff or offices. It also shipped bank notes by car or aircraft to the HSBC in the US. The bank shipped $7bn to the US from Mexico in 2007 and 2008, according to the report.

The bank circumvented US sanctions on countries including Cuba and Iran, says the report. In one case examined by the committee, two HSBC affiliates processed 25,000 transactions involving $19.4bn over seven years without disclosing the transactions' links to Iran...

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The report is also highly critical of regulators. In 2010, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) cited HSBC for a number of deficiencies, including failure to monitor $60tn in wire transfer and account activity and a backlog of 17,000 unreviewed account alerts regarding suspicious activities. But subcommittee investigators found that the OCC had failed to take a single enforcement action against the bank over the previous six years.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872....
August 13, 2012

HSBC Holdings PLC is hiring a former U.S. government official who policed U.S. sanctions against narcotics traffickers and terrorists, following allegations that HSBC moved funds for drug cartels and other suspicious groups.

The U.K.-based global bank is expected to name Robert Werner head of global standards assurance, a new post created in reaction to what the bank says were lapses in its legal-compliance programs, said a person familiar with the bank's plans.

Mr. Werner is a former director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury Department's sanctions-watchdog unit. Mr. Werner most recently ...