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The HSBC money laundering case demonstrates the difficulties institutions face when it comes to preventing crooks from using them to launder the money used to fund crime. Some are turning to new case management and broader cross department data analysis to avoid being taken to the cleaners.
July 31 -
A Congressional investigation found HSBC engaged in money laundering and sanctions busting for ten years, in multibillion-dollar amounts. Perhaps not coincidentally, the bank has been disinvesting from the U.S. Let's invite them to complete their departurefast.
July 30 -
As the HSBC hearings demonstrate, there's a growing expectation that individuals, not just institutions, will be held accountable. Recent enforcement actions also show a more risk-based, rather than rules-based, approach.
July 26 -
You should be able to move your money as fast as you can make it. But the banking system today works about as speedily as the Post Office.
July 24
When news broke Monday that New York regulators had accused Standard Chartered of laundering at least $250 billion for the Iranian government, the British bank found itself at the center of the latest banking maelstrom. The company's shares plummeted Tuesday as phrases like "rogue institution," "willful and egregious violations of law" and "terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes" made the rounds on Twitter.
But as the afternoon wore on, and perhaps the stirs of patriotism subsided, some began to question whether the ire was entirely deserved.
"Isn't it at least worth contemplating the possibility that not acting as an adjunct to U.S. gunboat diplomacy is actually the more 'socially legitimate' course here?" one reader commented on
In its
But, unlike HSBC, which essentially admitted guilt in
According to
Whether or not all the allegations are true, a provocative question was posed by the London official quoted in the New York regulator's order (and subsequently everywhere else on the Internet).
"You [expletive] Americans," the official allegedly wrote to an executive in the Americas who attempted to warn him of the repercussions attached to doing business with Iran. "Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're not going to deal with Iranians?"
Or, as another Salmon commenter more politely phrased it, "why is it OK for the U.S. to unilaterally declare that people all across the world cannot do business with Iran?"
A CNN commenter provided a potential answer to this question by pointing out, "You do realize this bank is in America, and
And others are quick to point out that, regardless of the pariah nation in question, foreign banks need to listen to us [expletive] Americans the second they set up shop on our shores.
As one commenter wrote on a
Do U.S. regulators have the right to tell foreign banks not to do business with certain countries? What's your take on the Standard Chartered money-laundering allegations? Post a comment below.
Jeanine Skowronski is the deputy editor of BankThink.