Report: HSBC Bank helped clients including close to Mubarak and Assad to hide $ 100 billion

[yota691]

Report: HSBC Bank helped clients including close to Mubarak and Assad to hide $ 100 billion

ECONOMYLast updated Tuesday, February 10 / شباط 2015; 10:31 (GMT +0400)

 

 

Atlanta, United States (CNN) - investigative report revealed Hide the British bank "HSBC" bank accounts for different categories of customers from the heads of their popular uprisings toppled, a weapon and drug dealers and tax evaders, size exceeded $ 100 billion.

She documents obtained by the "International Federation of Journalists investigative ICIJ" light on how to use the Swiss bank's own arm, the Swiss banking system of secrecy, to conceal the identities of account holders, and even help depositors to evade taxes.

The summary was based on "the International Federation of investigative reporters" to documents provided by a former employee of the bank to the French authorities in 2008, later obtained by the newspaper "Le Monde" French and distributed to various means of notification.

 

She drew a group of journalists to the repeated assurances given by the giant bank to its customers not to reveal confidential details of their accounts until the authorities of their country, next to "put multiple measures allows them to avoid paying taxes to their homeland."

He stressed the international banking giant, in a statement submitted to the "International Federation of Journalists investigative" subordination of the Swiss unit of private banking for "drastic reforms included measures recently increased the difficulty of tax evasion or money laundering," the customer.

He added that he "acknowledges responsibility for the failure to comply with the rules, and control of the performance over the past period."

According to the "International Federation of Journalists investigative" provided the bank services to circles close to the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and his Tunisian counterpart, Ben Ali, in addition to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and former officials and current in Britain, Russia, Ukraine, and India.

He stressed, "Htc HSBC" in a statement, strongly reduced the number of accounts in private banking unit in Syria, more than 30 thousand in 2007, to about 10 thousand account now.

 

[yota691]

GMT 11:10 2015 Wednesday, February 18 : Last Updated

Sued in the case of money laundering

Raid on the headquarters of "HSBC" in Geneva

A. P. B.

 

 Conducting raids Wednesday morning in the HSBC bank headquarters in Switzerland and open a criminal investigation against the bank in the money-laundering case, what the public prosecutor announced in the Canton of Geneva.

 London: The public prosecutor said in a statement:  "the public prosecutor declares that it is the impact of information that has been disclosed publicly recently for bank HSBC Private Bank (Switzerland), filed a criminal lawsuit against the bank and the unknown" on charges of aggravated money laundering. The raid took place in the offices of HSBC and vested in the Attorney General of the Canton of Geneva Olivier Journo with the help of the plaintiff first Live Bertosa. The lawsuit was filed against the bank is that it is possible, "in the light of evolution," the investigation expanded to include people materialists "suspected of committing acts of whitening" or involvement in such acts.

 

Bank HSBC at the heart of the scandal of tax evasion and money laundering has become known as "Suisse Lex", after detecting leaked by a former employee of the bank information is informational Engineer Herve Valsaana. According to documents Suisse Lex, the billions of dollars passed through the bank in order to smuggle them from taxes or laundered through front companies.

[SnowGlobe7]

[wc41]

Wow..... is this worsening in these later times or are we just more aware of what's always been?!?! I say yes to both!

[yota691]

Swiss prosecutor raids HSBC office, opens criminal inquiry

BY MARINA DEPETRIS
GENEVA Wed Feb 18, 2015 11:44am EST
pic wont load

1 OF 3. A HSBC logo is pictured behind the flag of the canton of Geneva at a Swiss branch of the bank in Geneva February 18, 2015.
CREDIT: REUTERS/DENIS BALIBOUSE


 

(Reuters) - Geneva's public prosecutor searched HSBC's (HSBA.L) lakeside Swiss office on Wednesday after opening a criminal inquiry into allegations of aggravated money laundering, the second probe to hit the bank this week.
Europe's largest lender is in regulators' sights after details about how its Swiss private bank allegedly helped wealthy clients dodge taxes were leaked to the media and published last week.
In an unusual move, the Geneva prosecutor's office notified the media of the raid as it was going on. It searched two HSBC offices and said its investigation could target individuals, who would be liable to a fine and up to five years in prison if found guilty of serious money laundering offences.
"As of now, we aim at securing all the information concerning the accounts and clients who have been mentioned as detaining funds resulting from criminal offenses," Attorney General Olivier Jornot told reporters.
"What we are looking for today is not yet proof. What we are looking for today are all documents, all information which will then allow us to make an analysis."
HSBC has apologized to customers and investors over the previous failings of its Swiss business and has said the operation has since been overhauled.
However, Britain's financial watchdog said on Monday it would investigate HSBC and focus on its current behavior.
HSBC's Swiss unit has been in the spotlight since 2008 when a former IT employee Hérvé Falciani fled Geneva with files which are alleged to show evidence of tax evasion by clients.
Jornot said Swiss law made it impossible to carry out an investigation based on stolen evidence but his office could investigate if it secured the evidence itself.
Falciani's files have been passed by the French tax authorities to their foreign counterparts around the world. U.S. officials then opened a criminal investigation and French magistrates put the bank under formal investigation last November.
The tax authorities in Belgium, Austria and Argentina are also looking at the allegations.
 
HSBC SAYS BUSINESS TRANSFORMED
HSBC's private bank has major operations in Switzerland, London and Hong Kong, and its chief executive, Peter Boyles, is based in the lakeside Geneva office. The office employs several hundred staff, who continued to work on Wednesday.
"We have cooperated continuously with the Swiss authorities since first becoming aware of the data theft in 2008 and we continue to cooperate," HSBC said in a statement.
Jornot said that so far he had "no reproach" to make about the bank's cooperation.
The bank has said compliance and controls at its Swiss private bank in the period up to 2007 fell short of requirements but the business had been transformed in recent years.
Swiss financial regulator FINMA, which had already investigated HSBC and criticized its internal controls in 2011, said it was aware of the proceedings by the Geneva prosecutor and was in contact with HSBC about it.
A concern for HSBC is that U.S. authorities could look at re-opening a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement with the bank, which followed a $1.9 billion fine after it was found to have helped move hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit drug money through the U.S. financial system.
The disclosures about the Swiss bank have also caused a political row in Britain over practices at HSBC and whether its tax authority had done enough to pursue suspected wrongdoers.
HSBC's shares were 0.5 percent firmer at 605.7 pence by 0913 ET, having slipped 2 percent since the first reports based on the leaks were published 10 days ago.
Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver has said the recent allegations had been "painful". They are also expected to overshadow HSBC's annual results on Monday and Gulliver and Chairman Douglas Flint are due to testify to British lawmakers on the Swiss scandal on Feb. 25.
 
(Additional reporting by Katharina Bart, Rupert Pretterklieber and Paul Arnold in Zurich and Steve Slater in London; Editing by Keith Weir and Greg Mahlich)

[yota691]

Swiss police raided the offices of HSBC after the money-laundering scandal .. and the King of Morocco to respond to reports of reach of

Last updated Thursday, February 19 / شباط 2015; 09:45 (GMT +0400)

 

 

Swiss investigator pantographs HSBC branch during raid

Geneva, Switzerland ( CNN ) - Swiss authorities confirmed that they carried out raids to two offices of the bank " HSBC , "the giant in Geneva, within a security crackdown to investigate the issue of money laundering, after recent reports pointed to the responsibility of the bank for hiding billions of client's funds while Re Moroccan monarch to press reports confirm that all financial Thoilath took place according to the law.

The bank had suffered a bitter campaign after a survey revealed press reports claimed responsibility for helping his clients to hide more than one hundred billion dollars in Swiss branches in order to evade taxes, prompting the Swiss prosecutors to open an investigation may expand to affects some individuals.

He stressed the bank from his part to cooperate with the investigation, without providing further comments on the report, which accused him of hiding money to people closely associated with the leaders of the countries and systems, including close to the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as political figures in Britain, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Romania India and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

 

Later, the newspaper "Le Monde" French widespread published a report stating the existence of financial accounts at the bank in favor of Morocco's King Mohammed VI, who responded by a letter which explained that it "is not a resident of a tax" in France and that he "let loose all his belongings tax in Morocco," adding that the financial amounts referred to in the bank HSBC and the estimated nine million dollars "was converted in full transparency, and the knowledge of Moroccan monetary authorities .. According to the law in force in the Kingdom . "

[sandfly]

YOTA ALOT OF PEOPLE ARE GOING DOWN. BIG PEOPLE

[umbertino]

PHUCK!

[yota691]

From umbertino...Lord Ken Macdonald QC says HMRC’s decision not to prosecute bank over Swiss revelations was ‘seriously legally flawed’

 

 

Owen Bowcott legal affairs correspondent

@owenbowcott

 

Sunday 22 February 2015 17.45 GMT

 

 

HSBC’s Swiss arm is potentially open to a range of criminal charges in Britain because there is “credible evidence” that it has had a role in enabling tax evasion, according to a former director of public prosecutions.

 

In a legal opinion prepared for the consumer watchdog, SumOfUs, Lord Ken Macdonald QC argues that there is sufficient evidence for the bank to be investigated for conspiracy to defraud the UK tax authorities.

 

Decisions taken by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) not to prosecute the bank were “seriously legally flawed”, he said.

 

Macdonald also said he believed that evidence already publicly available suggested HSBC should be prosecuted under the 1977 Criminal Law Act for its part in a “systemic” operation to deprive HMRC of revenue.

“It seems clear, from the evidence we have seen, that there exists credible evidence that HSBC Swiss and/or its employees have engaged over many years in systematic and profitable collusion in serious criminal activity against the exchequers of a number of countries.

 

“It seems equally clear that this criminal activity has taken place within the context of an institutional cynicism that is deeply shocking.

 

“The corporate and wholesale nature of HSBC Swiss’ apparent involvement in what amounts to grave cross-border crime makes it all the more obvious that the relevant evidence, once it came to the attention of HMRC, should have been the subject of urgent and sustained criminal investigation.

 

“It is inescapable that this investigation should have included a rigorous inquiry to establish whether there was any criminal complicity on the part of HSBC Holdings plc in the UK into this category of wrongdoing on the part of its Swiss subsidiary. In our view, any sufficient evidence of such complicity would be virtually certain to warrant prosecution in the public interest.”

 

HSBC said it had nothing to say in response to Macdonald’s remarks. A spokesperson told the Guardian: “We are not commenting on it.”

 

SumOfUs is now planning to launch a judicial review of HMRC’s decision not to prosecute the bank.

Macdonald argued that HMRC could have sought mutual legal assistance from the Swiss authorities or pursued a joint investigation with other UK criminal authorities.

 

Martin Caldwell of SumOfUs said: “No company can be above the law. If HSBC or its employees have defrauded British taxpayers they need to be brought to justice. By allowing wealthy clients to evade tax HSBC has cheated the public out of millions of pounds that could have funded schools, hospitals and libraries across the country.

 

“UK tax authorities have serious questions to answer. At best HMRC suffered a serious lapse of judgement, at worst they allowed HSBC and its wealthy customers to play by different rules to the rest of us.

 

“Legal and public opinion is united on this. Over 60,000 SumOfUs members including thousands of HSBC shareholders and customers joined our campaign for HSBC to be brought to justice. If HMRC is unwilling to investigate HSBC it is time we made them.”

 

Daniel Carey of Deighton Pierce Glynn solicitors, representing SumOfUs, said: “HMRC is legally obliged to consider pursuing a criminal investigation of HSBC based on all available evidence and upon a proper understanding of the law. It appears to have failed on both counts. If it maintains this refusal then judicial review would be an important and constitutionally appropriate step to take.”

HSBC said last week that it had cooperated “continuously with the Swiss authorities since first becoming aware of the data theft in 2008 and we continue to cooperate”.

 

HMRC said under the terms of the transfer of the disk containing information about the accounts from the French banks in 2010, it was prevented from transferring the information to other UK authorities. But the French finance minister Michel Sapin has disagreed saying that Britain was “entitled to bring court cases”, subject to judicial cooperation between the two countries.

 

An HMRC spokesman said: “HMRC received the HSBC Suisse data under very strict international treaty conditions, which limited our use of it only to pursuing tax offences. As the data is now in the public domain, the French have confirmed that they will provide all assistance necessary to us.

 

“We are awaiting formal written confirmation from the French that they will alter the conditions to allow its wider use by HMRC and have already started discussions with other UK law enforcement agencies about exploiting it”.

 

 

Lord Macdonald, QC, the former director of public prosecutions. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA

 

 

 

Read more: http://dinarvets.com/forums/index.php?/topic/197665-hsbc-should-face-uk-criminal-charges-says-former-public-prosecutor/#ixzz3SV6Wfs7X

[SnowGlobe7]

flawed...lol...ya think????

[yota691]

24 February 2015 - 11H27

Banks probed over precious metals price rigging: report

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© DPA/AFP/File | The banks probed by the US government over possible manipulation of precious metals markets include HSBC, Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Societe Generale, Standard Bank and UBS



 
NEW YORK (AFP) - 
The United States is probing major banks over possible manipulation of precious metals markets, the Wall Street Journal said Monday.
The investigation centers on prices for gold, silver, platinum and palladium.
It is being carried out by the Justice Department with help from Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates raw materials and derivatives, the newspaper said, quoting sources close to the case.
The banks targeted are HSBC, Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Societe Generale, Standard Bank and UBS.
The probes are at the preliminary stage, but HSBC, in releasing yearly results Monday, noted requests from the Justice Department and the CFTC over the precious metals probe, the Journal said.
It is not the first time the role of banks in determining the price of precious metals has been questioned, but the probes carried out so far, mainly in Europe, led nowhere, the paper said.
Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Standard Bank of South Africa and the German chemical group BASF have also been under investigation since November over a complaint alleging rigging of the prices of platinum and palladium.

[yota691]

"HSBC" Bank pays $ 43 million to Switzerland to settle the issue of money laundering

 

Thursday, June 4, 2015

HSBC agreed to pay to the authorities of Geneva 40 million Swiss francs, about $ 43 million to settle an investigation into money laundering in Swiss private bank of him and is one of several investigations branch faced Wealth Management which takes Geneva-based.
The leaked files in earlier this year raised allegations that the private bank HSBC easy to hide the wealth of clients millions of dollars and brought to the attention of the regulatory authorities, including the Prosecutor General of the Geneva-largest bank in Europe.
After four months of investigation Geneva authorities said they closed the investigation after HSBC agreed to pay 40 million francs for transgressions, the largest such fine imposed by local prosecutors.
The Attorney General of Geneva Yves Bertosa at a news conference: "Over the years, HSBC has suffered from aspects of regulatory failure in the fight against money laundering."
The bank said in a statement that he would face no criminal charges and that he is not suspected in the commission of the bank or any of its staff currently criminal offenses.
The Swiss branch of HSBC Bank still faces investigations by the authorities in the United States, France and Belgium.