Inside The HSBC Money-Laundering Machine
Substantially more detail than any previous reporting. Given views on Hamas within Congress, HSBC is probably toast. Don't be surprised if the fine exceeds $1 billion, which is the current high-end of analysts estimates.
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Former employees in the New Castle office describe a febrile boiler-room environment overseen by managers uninterested in investigating transactions with possible links to drug trafficking, terrorist financing, Iran and other countries under U.S. sanctions, and other illegal activities. Instead, they say, the single-minded focus was on clearing out the paperwork as fast as possible.
"There were multiple backlogs" of alerts, said Everett Stern, who worked in the New Castle building from October 2010 to November 2011. "The name of the game was to close as many as you possibly can."
Stern sent an email to two superiors with the subject line, "Compliance error." In the email, Stern wrote: "I believe investigators in the department are unknowingly making a major compliance error. Over the last couple of months investigators have approached me about cases in the Middle East, especially in Palestine.… It appears that most investigators do not understand that the government of Palestine is the terrorist organization Hamas."
One of the bosses, Jeff Kraft, an anti-money laundering compliance manager, came bursting out of his cubicle. "Are you out of your f------ mind?" he said, according to Stern's recollection. "I should fire you right now."
Kraft insisted that Hamas was not a terrorist organization and that if government officials saw the email, the New Castle office would be shut down, according to Stern.
The New Castle look-back, overseen by consultants Deloitte LLP, was manned by more than 100 former law-enforcement officials, bank examiners and others. Many of them were working under contract with outside anti-money laundering consulting firms.
The gig paid well - between $65 and $125 an hour - and some contractors said they were making upwards of $200,000 a year.
Jul 14, 2012 at 2:39 PM
Reader Comments (14)
That gibes pretty well with what I observed while working in the Ponzimonium. That's about the minimum wage, which permits the accoutrements of lake shore living even though it means coupon clipping with the windows drawn.
These people are wholly oblivious to the bigger picture, in which they function as glorified janitors. They're the first ones to squeal "conspiracy theory" if you start asking questions. They are as competitive within their homeowners association as they are docile to "authority," however arbitrary. Many of them don't see themselves as drug addicts or alcoholics because Dr. Jain was so confident that a re-fill at a higher dosage was just the thing, and North Shore Magazine said that Chardonnay was to die for after the theater.
Richard Adams wrote about them in Watership Down through a series of chapters about a well-fed warren that seems to have neither worries nor enemies. But this warren, welcoming as it is to the group of weary rabbits on a quest to find a better life than the one they left behind, does have some dark peculiarities, including its refusal to entertain the outsiders’ questions. Adams concludes the episode with a chapter called “The Shining Wire,” wherein the gruesome reality behind the would-be paradise is revealed.
I’m sorry. Tonight’s jimsonweed had quite a bit of creeper to it.
Time is running out for U.S. securities regulators to file civil charges for alleged wrongdoing during the financial crisis.
Federal laws under which the Securities and Exchange Commission usually goes after alleged fraud and other misdeeds have a five-year statute of limitations. The five-year limit is causing SEC officials to race to file lawsuits in some cases and ask lawyers representing the targets of certain investigations to give the agency more time, according to people close to the investigation.
more
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303292204577519223428544602.html
The filthy CRIMINALS must be PROSECUTED for their CRIMES. Absolutely NOTHING will "change," much LESS get "better" until and unless THAT happens. Indeed, if the CRIMINALS are ALLOWED to continue to PLUNDER, everything will, in FACT, only get WORSE. MUCH WORSE.
ALL criminals involved in these monstrous, reprehensible, PATHOLOGICAL financial CRIMES, which were clearly, totally and willfully collaborated as a gigantic Scheme to Defraud and totally BILK the very citizens of this, our country, the United States, and, um, the entire world, MUST PAY.
Each one of these Criminals must be Indicted, Prosecuted to the fullest extent of THE NEW LAWS, (all of which will be made retroactive) and, finally, actually PUNISHED SEVERELY; Let me be perfectly clear: Each CRIMINAL that is found GUILTY in the Courts of Law, whether by a judicious Judge or by a Jury of his/her "peers," shall be held fully accountable for their [blatant] CRIMES, and penalties will surely entail STIFF terms of imprisonment, along with the lawful SEIZURE of ALL ill-gotten gains.
We all know, for example, that George Bush, Dick Cheney; I will call it what it actually is, in Fact: the entire White Power Structure; And every other demon: Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Richard Fuld, Hank Paulson, Larry Sommers, Timothy Geithner, Alan Greenspan; And an astonishingly dizzying and countless number of all the other CRIMINALS; All should be on the TOP of the list for the vigorous investigations and thorough prosecutions.
We MUST HOLD each of these Serial PREDATORS/Criminals FULLY ACCOUNTABLE for their outrageous crimes of Fraud, Scheme to Defraud, Financial Elder Abuse, and countless other very serious FELONIES and WAR CRIMES.
In fact, Every single one of these RAPACIOUS psychopaths should be publicly EXECUTED, preferably by HANGING. And I mean every word...
The United States elected a corrupt president because those in power are now openly corrupt. They should not be called Americans. They should be called Nazis for the pain they have caused and especially because they don't care at all.
The house sold for $104,000. and the man who bought sold it a year later for $190,000. We tried a short sale and HSBC would not accept it. The whole time they are screwing the whole country. I want them to be responsible and give me a reparation for my home. At lease my equity. The hosue was taxed at $199,000. I owed $ 150.000. They should be made to pay those who they screwed.
Very sorry to hear about your situation. Banks continue to lie about assets associated with mortgages like yours and, as Jack Lohman points out, the politicians are on the payroll, so rather than stop the mess, they just enable it. Nothing we say here can make your own problems go away, but believe me, people are sympathetic to your situation. And they understand that is often, as in your case, the bank's fault when things go this wrong. Thanks for sharing your story and best of luck.
--Pitchfork
I'm real sorry to hear about what this scum-sucking pig of a company did to your family and home.
Your story does touch on an issue that I haven't seen raised anywhere, and it's good one for fraudulent foreclosure victims to consider.
If your mortgage was done in between 2000 and 2008 (which may be the case given the '09 foreclosure date), there's a good chance your promissory note, which you signed at closing, was packaged into a mortgage-backed security and sold. If that's the case, there is a sky-high probability that the note is missing.
Missing notes are at the heart of the foreclosure crisis. The problem is that without the note, foreclosing plaintiffs lack what is called standing, i.e., the legal injury necessary to legally initiate a lawsuit. Without the note, a foreclosing bank cannot establish that you the homeowner owe it any money, in which case the bank lacks standing.
To cover this deficiency, the banks engage in robo-signing, forgery, bogus affidavits, and any number of other frauds on the courts. This, in a nutshell, is why modern foreclosures are often referred to as fraudclosures. None of this is news, as many blogs and anti-foreclosure sites have covered these points in great detail.
What hasn't been covered is that foreclosure judgments rendered in such cases are void as a matter of law, since a plaintiff's standing is necessary for the court to have subject matter jurisdiction. Importantly, jurisdiction cannot be waived and may be raised at any time. What this means is that void foreclosure judgments are subject to being overturned in future proceedings. I don't know what the remedy would be for a homeowner in such instances, because I cannot find any such case law pertaining to foreclosure cases.
The long and short of is that I'd urge you to seek out legal advice of your case. That said, I've followed the foreclosure defense blogs relatively closely, and I've never seen the void judgment rule discussed.
Best of luck to you.
If you don't mind, what state do you live in? I am in full agreement with Pitchfork and pay special attention to what Cheyenne said.
Illegally structuring financial transactions is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, authorities said. "
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48744061/ns/local_news-cincinnati_oh/t/cop-among-charged-pot-distribution-ring/#.UDeoQ6BQiWM
Question for the group;
If these guys are looking at this much time for illegally structuring financial transactions and money laundering, how come other people wearing suits and ties get off the hook so easily. Especially when "others" same crimes are larger in scope? The only difference is the volume of cash involved and the physical drugs...
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/10/hillary-clinton-foundation-donors-hsbc-swiss-bank
The charitable foundation run by Hillary Clinton and her family has received as much as $81m from wealthy international donors who were clients of HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank.
Leaked files from HSBC’s Swiss banking division reveal the identities of seven donors to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation with accounts in Geneva.
They include Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate and one of the foundation’s biggest financial backers, and Richard Caring, the British retail magnate who, the bank’s internal records show, used his tax-free Geneva account to transfer $1m into the New York-based foundation.
A spokesperson for Hillary Clinton declined to comment about her family foundation’s receipt of money from donors with accounts in Geneva.