Banking Giant HSBC Sheltered Murky Cash Linked to Dictators and Arms Dealers - ICIJ

[WillyT]

Banking Giant HSBC Sheltered Murky Cash Linked to Dictators and Arms Dealers
Team of journalists from 45 countries unearths secret bank accounts maintained for criminals, traffickers, tax dodgers, politicians and celebrities
By Gerard Ryle, Will Fitzgibbon, Mar Cabra, Rigoberto Carvajal, Marina Walker Guevara, Martha M. Hamilton and Tom Stites - ICIJ
February 8, 2015, 4:00 pm

<snip>

Secret documents reveal that global banking giant HSBC profited from doing business with arms dealers who channeled mortar bombs to child soldiers in Africa, bag men for Third World dictators, traffickers in blood diamonds and other international outlaws.

The leaked files, based on the inner workings of HSBC’s Swiss private banking arm, relate to accounts holding more than $100 billion. They provide a rare glimpse inside the super-secret Swiss banking system — one the public has never seen before.

The documents, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists via the French newspaper Le Monde, show the bank’s dealings with clients engaged in a spectrum of illegal behavior, especially in hiding hundreds of millions of dollars from tax authorities. They also show private records of famed soccer and tennis players, cyclists, rock stars, Hollywood actors, royalty, politicians, corporate executives and old-wealth families.

These disclosures shine a light on the intersection of international crime and legitimate business, and they dramatically expand what’s known about potentially illegal or unethical behavior in recent years at HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks.

The leaked account records show some clients making trips to Geneva to withdraw large wads of cash, sometimes in used notes. The files also document huge sums of money controlled by dealers in diamonds who are known to have operated in war zones and sold gemstones to finance insurgencies that caused untold deaths.

HSBC, which is headquartered in London and has offices in 74 nations and territories on six continents, at first insisted that ICIJ destroy the data...

<snip>

More: http://www.icij.org/project/swiss-leaks/banking-giant-hsbc-sheltered-murky-cash-linked-dictators-and-arms-dealers

[libdem4life]

1. Hopefully there is safety in numbers (of authors).

This is inconvenient data, but good work from the French. What will it change? We'll see if these folk get tax bills. Probably a little hard to find the diamond dealers, but the celebrities ought to be available.

Didn't we bail out HSBC along with all the others? Don't recall. In the red on their reported accounting books. Way in the black on their Black Opps books.

[Malraiders]

2. Cristian Slater was named in

the files. we can wait and see if the IRS goes after him as a tax cheat.

From: http://www.icij.org/project/swiss-leaks/explore-swiss-leaks-data

File details

Christian Michael Slater was linked to an HSBC client account named "Captain Kirk,” after the Star Trek character. It was opened in 1996 and closed in 1997. The account listed two postal addresses: one in the United States, associated with ERNST & YOUNG LLP, and one in the United Kingdom. The leaked files do not specify the exact role Slater had in relation to the account.
Comment

Slater did not respond to ICIJ's repeated requests for comment.

[blm]

3. BCCI ring a bell?

.

[salin]

4. indeed.

[blm]

5. hey you

; )

[WillyT]

6. Yes It Does...

[Octafish]

7. HSBC got big bailout by the US taxpayer and it's a UK bank.

The crooked bank got billions from its dealings with AIG, which Tim Geithner say bailed out "100-cents on the dollar."

The OP should have 1,000 recs,

[Octafish]

8. HSBC has behaved like the mafia - yet STILL not one of its bankers has been put on trial

By ALEX BRUMMER FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 19:24 EST, 9 February 2015 |

Of all Britain’s banks, the proud Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, now known as HSBC, always seemed a cut above the rest.

SNIP...

Shockingly, the HSBC files also led the French police to an extraordinary network of drug-trafficking, money-laundering, fraud and tax evasion, the proceeds of which seem to have ended up in HSBC’s Swiss private bank.

It had come under the aegis of HSBC when, in 1999, the firm’s then chairman Sir John Bond bought two private banks — the Republic Bank of New York and Safra Republic Holdings — for $10billion from the financier Edmond Safra.

So secretive were the affairs of Safra’s banks that a special writing script, reserved for the richest and most sensitive clients, was used to record transactions.

In buying the private banks, at a time when huge new wealth was being created in China and exported from HSBC’s original Hong Kong home, Bond and his board clearly felt they could tap into the great riches being generated around the world.

CONTINUED...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2946740/ALEX-BRUMMER-HSBC-behaved-like-mafia-not-one-bankers-trial.html

It's like Nugan-Hand Bank was merely a template for what was to come.

[WillyT]

9. Yeah... Why Is That ???