US Congress and British Parliament Probing HSBC’s Criminality

Both the US Senate’s Judiciary Committee and the British Parliament’s Treasury Committee are conducting investigations into the criminal money-laundering activities of HSBC, which served as the British Empire opium bank at the height of the Empire’s opium trade in the 19th Century.

On Feb. 18, the New York-based HSBC whistleblower John Cruz testified for two hours to the Senate committee on Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch’s non-prosecution of HSBC in 2012. The committee’s chief investigative counsel, Jason Foster, is not only interested in the 1,000 pages of HSBC customer account records, but he is also requesting that Cruz submit some 70 hours of conversation he secretly recorded of bank management and compliance officers in New York, that also include Cruz’s own conversations with law enforcement authorities, such as the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), reported WND, the publication to which Cruz gave his documentation in 2012 when federal, state, and local authorities did not move against HSBC.

On the British front, Bloomberg reports that the Parliament Treasury Committee, chaired by Andrew Tyrie, has scheduled a hearing for next Wednesday, Feb. 25th, at which HSBC Holdings’ chairman Douglas Flint will be questioned, over his role as the bank’s finance director at the time when the bank was helping customers evade taxes through its Geneva unit. HSBC CEO Stuart Gulliver will not attend the hearing, but there are rumors that Flint may be forced to step down. On Feb. 10, Bloomberg had reported that the hearings will delve
“into allegations that HSBC Holdings Plc held Swiss accounts for drug cartels and tax evaders,” and that hearings were also announced by parliamentarian Margaret Hodge, chair of the U.K. Public Accounts Committee. In a speech in London, Hodge said quests would focus
“about whether the bank facilitated tax evasion.”

On Feb. 20, HSBC whistleblower Herve Falciani was interviewed in Italy’s LaStampa where he again reiterated that he is not talking about one bank.

“If you dig down a little bit in how offshore banks and intermediate banking work, you would understand that these things cannot involve just one single bank,” he told La Stampa. “Everything must be analyzed and understood in the next few months.”