HSBC (Britain's largest bank) Restricts Large Cash Withdrawals

[Jesus Malverde]

4. Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation

Last edited Sat Jan 25, 2014, 04:47 PM - Edit history (1)

Ran out of Mexican drug money ......

Boo hoo

HSBC Judge Approves $1.9B Drug-Money Laundering Accord

HSBC was accused of failing to monitor more than $670 billion in wire transfers and more than $9.4 billion in purchases of U.S. currency

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-approves-1-9b-drug-money-laundering-accord.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=HSBC+opium+trade


Eager to move cash through the teller windows of HSBC’s Mexico unit in the largest amounts possible — sometimes as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars per day — drug traffickers designed specially shaped boxes, a document released by the Justice Department on Tuesday states. Once the cash was in HSBC accounts, brokers wired it to exporters in New York City and elsewhere in the United States as payment for goods destined for Colombian businesses, according to a”statement of facts” that was filed in federal court in Brooklyn along with a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA).

Those Colombian importers would have provided an equal sum of pesos to the Colombian drug traffickers, via so-called Black Market Peso Exchange (BMPE) brokers, completing the money laundering cycle, sources familiar with the process said. The Justice Department said the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and the Norte del Valle Cartel in Colombia took full advantage of HSBC’s failures to police its Mexico-linked transactions, pumping more than $881 million through the bank, the statement of facts said.

The money was a drop in the river of currency that flowed through HSBC’s Mexico unit to its U.S. unit, however. As part of HSBC’s U.S. dollar banknotes operation, currency provided by banks, money-changing businesses and other entities in Mexico was transported into the United States and deposited with the Federal Reserve. Between 2004 and 2007, HSBC’s Mexico unit funneled more than $3 billion per year to the bank’s U.S. unit as part of the banknotes business, court documents state. These numbers reportedly prompted Mexico’s Central Bank to express concern because the volume seemed unusually high.

http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/less-drug-money-traffic-at-hsbc-may-mean-more-risk-for-other-banks-in-u-s/