Financial Transparency Coalition

LONDON – Today, Europe’s largest bank, HSBC, announced that it will pay $1.9 billion (£1.2 billion) to settle allegations that it laundered money for drugs cartels, terrorists and pariah states. During approximately the same period that HSBC failed to check whether the dollars it was shipping from Mexico to the US were drugs money, 47,000 people died at the hands of Mexican drugs traffickers.

WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity today called for regulators to follow-through with prosecutions for any illegal anti-money laundering lapses at HSBC Holdings Plc.

Task Force member Global Witness's Rosie Sharp wrote the following op-ed in The Guardian on Monday. She expanded on the argument that she wrote about on this blog earlier this week, about the implications of the Guardian, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the BBC's Panorama programme investigations into the nominee shareholders that make anonymous shell companies possible.

WASHINGTON, DC – The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition welcomed news that the U.S. Department of the Treasury will be leading a government task force to review the nation’s antiquated anti-money laundering regulations. The FACT Coalition—an alliance of more than 60 prominent anti-corruption, transparency, small business, and global development groups—originally called on the Treasury Department in September 2011 to undertake such a review.