Special Report: U.S. documents allege HSBC money-laundering lapses

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Special Report: U.S. documents allege HSBC money-laundering lapses

By Carrick Mollenkamp, Brett Wolf and Brian Grow

NEW YORK | Thu May 3, 2012 7:30am EDT

(Reuters) - In April 2003, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York state bank regulators cracked the whip on HSBC Bank USA, ordering it to do a better job of policing itself for suspicious money flows. Staff in the bank's anti-money laundering division, according to a person who worked there at the time, flew into a "panic."

The U.S. unit of London-based HSBC Holdings Plc quickly rallied. It hired a tough federal prosecutor to oversee anti-money laundering efforts. It installed monitoring systems for operations that had grown unwieldy during the bank's U.S. expansion. The aim, as HSBC said in an agreement with regulators at the time, was to "ensure that the bank fully addresses all deficiencies in the bank's anti-money laundering policies and procedures."

Nearly a decade later, the effort has failed to satisfy law-enforcement officials.

The extent of that failure is laid out in confidential documents reviewed by Reuters that originate from investigations of HSBC's U.S. operations by two U.S. Attorneys' offices.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/03/us-hsbcusa-probes-idUSBRE8420FX20120503

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. It is very sad that there is not as much interest in the massive financial crimes

as there is in the latest gossip magazines and tv shows.

[Prometheus Bound]

2. I was about to say 'unbelievable' but then.....

Quite an interesting read. It seems clear that their anti-money laundering efforts were completely fake.