Financial Transparency Coalition

LONDON / WASHINGTON DC - According to the chair of a U.S. Senate subcommittee, HSBC’s “pervasively polluted” culture allowed money launderers, drug dealers and suspected terrorists to move their money through the U.S. financial system. Today, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) will hold a hearing exposing HSBC’s North American banking units alleged failure to curb financial crime, and the failure of banking regulators to address this.

WASHINGTON, DC – The FACT Coalition will host a joint press conference on Tuesday, July 17th following the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation’s hearing “U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History.”

Reuters’ published a fascinating report today, ‘Out of Control at HSBC’. It draws on leaked documents from a number of criminal investigations into the bank that assert the bank violated U.S. anti-money laundering laws. The report confirms what Global Witness has been saying for several years: despite a global system of anti-money laundering laws, banks in practice fail to carry out their obligations to combat financial crime.

LONDON – Between June and September 2010 the Libyan state oil fund deposited over $1bn with HSBC, according to a document leaked to Global Witness and published today. The deposit brought the balance with the British bank to $1.42bn, up from $292.7m three months earlier. The document also reveals the total assets managed by the state oil fund – Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) – swelled from $54bn to $64bn in the space of three months.