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

[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.

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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.

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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.