HSBC exposed: Drug money banking, terror dealings, money laundering!

Watch
HSBC hid '$16bn,' says a US senate
HSBC concealed more than $US16 billion in sensitive transactions to Iran, a US Senate panel says.
Play

Fullscreen

 
The HSBC Private Bank in Geneva Source: AFP 

SHAMED HSBC Bank executives have admitted to allowing Iran, terrorists and drug dealers to launder billions of dollars.

With the international banking sector already under fire for manipulating interest rates and reckless trading, HSBC said more should have been done to prevent years of abuse amounting to tens of billions of dollars of illicit transactions.

US politicians grilled HSBC executives and US Treasury officials for failing to guard against money laundering they said benefited Mexican drug lords and terrorist networks, and for their bypassing of sanctions on Iran.

"It's pretty shocking stuff," subcommittee chairman Senator Carl Levin said.

Among the findings was the revelation that HSBC and its US affiliate concealed more than $15.67 billion in sensitive transactions to Iran, violating US transparency rules over a six-year period.

The chief compliance officer of HSBC says he is stepping down from that position after the investigation.

But David Bagley, the head of compliance for London-based HSBC Holdings, told a Senate investigations panel that he will remain at HSBC.

Bagley and other current and former executives of the bank apologised for lapses but said they weren't fully aware of illicit transactions flowing through the bank.

Senators expressed scepticism that they didn't know about problems that persisted for seven years.

"I recognise that there have been some significant areas of failure," David Bagley said at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations.

"HSBC has fallen short of our own expectations and the expectations of our regulators," he said.

While Bagley said the bank has "learned a number of valuable lessons" he acknowledged that this "clearly took far too long to resolve."

In its 330-page report, the Senate found the lender allowed affiliates in countries such as Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh to move billions of dollars in suspect funds into the United States without adequate controls.

Bagley has been the head of compliance since 2002, during the period in which the Senate investigation found that HSBC's lack of oversight allowed the bank to be used by drug traffickers and possible financiers of terrorist groups, and for other illicit purposes around the globe.

Bagley said he lacked full authority over the bank's far-flung affiliates, which each had their own compliance officer.

HSBC executives were aware of the "concealed Iranian transactions" - which stripped all identifying Iranian information from documentation - as early as 2001 but allowed thousands of transactions to continue until 2007.

A review of HSBC's use of so-called U-turn transactions, in which funds are sent into and then out of the United States through non-Iranian foreign banks, showed the bank conducted almost $US25,000 transactions with Iran.

"The vast majority of the Iranian transactions, ranging from 75 to 90 per cent over the years, were sent through HBUS and other US dollar accounts without disclosing any connection to Iran," according to the report.

The US prohibits doing business with nations it regards as enemies such as Iran and North Korea, and its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OPAC) imposes tight filters to halt potentially prohibited transactions.

Levin said the bank willfully circumvented the OFAC filters.

The senator said senior HSBC officials in London "knew what was going on, but allowed the deceptive conduct to continue."

Under the slogan The World's Local Bank, the network that began life as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation provides US dollars to HSBC banks in many countries under a procedure known as "correspondent banking."

But its compliance failures clearly spun out of control.

The report said HSBC's Mexican affiliate "transported $7 billion in physical US dollars to HBUS from 2007 to 2008 ... raising red flags that the volume of dollars included proceeds from illegal drug sales in the United States."

And it said HBUS "provided US dollars and banking services to some banks in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh despite links to terrorist financing."

Related post:
Moody's downgrades 15 major banks: Citigroup, HSBC ...

US apologizes for Chinese Exclusion Act

Rep. Judy Chu, D-California, sponsored a resolution that apologized for the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act



 AFP © Enlarge photo

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution Monday decrying a law -- more than a century old -- that prevented Chinese people from immigrating to the United States.

The resolution, approved by the Democratic-led Senate in October, voices 'regret' for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese workers from further immigration and barred existing residents from naturalization and voting.

The Act lasted for roughly six decades, and marked the first and only time the United States federal government explicitly rejected an immigrant group on the basis of their origin.

"Today (is) a rare moment in history for the Chinese American community," said Representative Judy Chu, the Democratic head of the US Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC).

Chu proposed the legislation and reached an agreement with the rival Republican Party to bring the resolution to a vote today.

"Today, the House made history when both chambers of Congress officially and formally acknowledged the ugly and un-American nature of laws that targeted Chinese immigrants."



Census figures show that over 100,000 ethnic Chinese lived in the United States around the turn of the 19th century. Many were recruited from China "to work as cheap labor to do the most dangerous work laying the tracks" on the transcontinental railroad, said Congressman Mike Honda, immigration task force chair of the CAPAC.

Honda added that the early Chinese-American immigrants "strengthened our nation's infrastructure, only to be persecuted when their labor was seen as competition and the dirtiest work was done."

The US Congress only repealed the Exclusion Act after Japanese wartime propaganda cited the law to question China's alliance with the United States.

"To have moral authority around the world, we must speak out against prejudice at home," said House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco, a major center of the Chinese-American community since some of the earliest immigrants arrived in the 1800s.

"Though this legislation cannot erase the deeds of the past, it reiterates our commitment to equal rights for all Americans, regardless of race, now and in the future," Pelosi added.

When the bill voicing regret for the 1882 Act passed in the Senate, it was made clear that legislation would not open the way for compensation claims from Chinese-American families affected by the act.

Some 14.7 million people, 4.8 percent of the total US population, self-identified as Asian on the 2010 Census.

Related post:
China issues 2011 US human rights record  May 27, 2012

China bashing not the solution !

Image via Wikipedia

Tweet

GLOBAL TRENDS By MARTIN KHOR

The US Senate is scheduled to vote this week on a “currency Bill” to allow actions against China’s imports. But blaming China may unleash a trade war without solving America’s problems.

IS China’s currency and trade performance a threat to the United States? Or are American politicians using China as a scapegoat for the country’s economic problems?

“China bashing” has been on the rise in the United States. It is widely thought that politicians of both parties are doing it to gain popularity in view of the coming elections.

For some years, Congress members have threatened to take action against Chinese imports to retaliate against what they see as China’s manipulation of its currency level.

The politicians say that the Chinese yuan is lower than what it should be if there were no government intervention.

They charge that the undervalued currency enables China to have a large trade surplus vis-a-vis the United States, and that this has caused the loss of American jobs.

These charges are refuted by the Chinese government, which argues that the US trade deficit is due to domestic factors and not Chinese policy. It also points to the 7% appreciation of the yuan versus the dollar in recent months.

This issue has been a central economic policy issue between the two major countries. It could escalate into a major battle on the ground.

The US Senate is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Bill aimed at enabling import tariffs to be placed on Chinese imports as a retaliation against the alleged currency manipulation.

In a first step, the Senate on Oct 3 voted 79-19 to allow a week-long debate on the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011. The Bill mandates a process for imposing tariffs on imports of a country with allegedly “misaligned currencies”.

Though China is not named, it is obviously the target. The Bill would in effect require the US Treasury Department to determine if China was manipulating the yuan. If it finds this to be the case, extra tariffs can be placed on some imported Chinese goods.



The Bill is expected to pass in the Senate. But a similar Bill has to also go through the House of Representatives, and be approved by US President Barack Obama, before trade measures can be taken.

These two steps are far from assured. Although it seems the majority of the House are in favour, Speaker John Boehner said last week it was dangerous to be moving legislation through Congress to force “someone to deal with the value of their currency ... while I’ve got concerns about how the Chinese have dealt with their currency, I’m not sure this is the way to fix it”.

Obama last Thursday accused China of “gaming” the trade system to the disadvantage of other countries, especially the United States. But he also expressed concern that the Senate Bill “may not actually work … as it may be only ‘symbolic’, and would probably not be upheld by the World Trade Organisation (WTO)”.

Nevertheless, the probability of the passage of the Senate Bill has heightened US-China tensions and raised the potential of a serious trade war.

As could be expected, Chinese government agencies and think tanks are reacting strongly to what they perceive as a protectionist move.

The People’s Bank of China (its central bank) said the Senate Bill would not help resolve the United States’ domestic issues such as the trade deficit, low level of savings and high unemployment, but could potentially affect the economy and market confidence.

It added: “The passage of the Bill may seriously affect China’s currency reforms, potentially leading to a trade war between the two sides.”

Xu Mingqi, deputy director of the Institute of the World Economy at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, had this to say: “It is easy for the US to make China a scapegoat of its domestic problems at a time when its economy remains weak with a high unemployment rate and the next general election only 13 months away.”

In the event the Senate Bill makes its way into actual law, a dispute case will most likely be taken against the United States at the WTO.

WTO rules do not allow countries to impose punitive duties on the basis that a certain country’s currency is undervalued. That this is so is appropriate. Valuing currencies to see if they are “manipulated” is very complex and difficult.

For example, the United States has also been accused of pushing its currency down through its controversial policy of “quantitative easing” (central bank pumping of funds into the banking system).

And is Switzerland “manipulating” its currency by announcing it will not tolerate further appreciation of the franc?

Allowing the currency issue to be a subject of possible unfair practice open to trade sanctions will open the road to many other issues being similarly recognised, such as a country’s tax rates, interest rates, and labour and environmental standards. There will be no end to having reasons for new trade protectionism.

A US law based on the Senate Bill will probably be found to be inconsistent with US obligations in the WTO. But by the time the WTO dispute system panel makes a final ruling (this may take years), some damage may already be done should the United States act against Chinese imports in the meantime.

China may not take the US actions lying down, and can come up with retaliatory action on US goods. Thus, a trade war may be unleashed.

Interestingly, although some well known American economists like Paul Krugman and Fred Bergsten advocate US action against Chinese imports, some business associations as well as important newspapers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have come out strongly against the Senate Bill for its protectionism and trade war potential.

The high-pitched attack on China because of its large trade surplus with the United States is misplaced. Little of the gross surplus actually accrues to China.

A 2010 paper by the South Centre shows that only a small part of China’s exports to the United States is actually retained as income in China.

For example, in 2005, China’s gross trade surplus with the United States was US$172bil (RM543bil), but in value-added terms (what is earned by the respective countries after deducting the import content of their exports), it was only US$40bil (RM126bil).

Further, a large part of the Chinese trade surplus in value-added terms was earned by foreign firms in China and thus, does not belong to China. As a result, income left in China was no more than 30% of the total value of exports to the United States.

Therefore, the criticism that China enjoys extraordinarily high trade surpluses with the United States is misplaced.

Also, even if US trade measures reduce Chinese imports into the United States, this does not mean that the US import bill will be reduced.

Goods from other developing countries such as Vietnam or Indonesia may just replace the Chinese goods.

Therefore, US actions based on the Senate Bill would hardly help the United States get rid of its trade deficit.

It is best that the United States take domestic actions to address its domestic economic problems, rather than make a scapegoat of other countries and potentially unleash new trade wars.