HSBC

Private bank

HSBC  link () Powerbase Sourcewatch Website
File:HSBC.jpg
Formation	3 March 1865
Founder	Thomas Sutherland
Headquarters	8 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London, United Kingdom
Leader	HSBC/Director
Subgroups	The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC Bank plc, HSBC GLT India, HSBC Bank USA, HSBC Bank Malaysia, HSBC Bank Middle East, HSBC Mexico, HSBC Bank Brazil, HSBC Finance
Staff	266,273
Sponsor of	WEF/Young Global Leaders, Peterson Institute
Membership	Mark E Tucker,Noel Quinn,Ewen Stevenson,Laura Cha,Henri de Castries,James Forese,Steven Guggenheimer,Irene Lee,José Antonio Meade Kuribreña,Heidi Miller,Eileen Murray,David Nish,Jackson Tai,Pauline van der Meer,Aileen Taylor
The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, one of the world's biggest banks

HSBCis a British multinational investment bank and financial services holding company. It was the 7^th largest bank in the world in 2018, and the largest in Europe, with total assets of US$2.558 trillion. Founded after the Opium Wars, it claims that its banking practices have long since moved away from opium tradeTemplate:Cn.

History

HSBC was founded in 1865, after the Second Opium War, when a British-friendly bank needed to be created to facilitate trade in the region, connecting the Empire’s newly acquired Shanghai concession and Hong Kong with British India (the major world producer of opium) along with the rest of the British Empire and Europe.

This bank was not only meant to facilitate foreign trade within China in however it deemed fit, but in addition was created namely to trade in the product of opium. It is important to note that although the founder of HSBC is credited as Thomas Sutherland, a Scottish merchant who wanted the bank to operate under “sound Scottish banking principles”, the bank had been created from the start to facilitate trade on behalf of the British Empire.

Staff

Watch on YouTube

All the Plenary's Men [2017] - John Titus tells how the financial systems of the world are nothing more than global criminal banking cartels immune to law. The story covers HSBC's exoneration in December 2012 for laundering money for drug dealers and terrorists.

Staff include various deep politicians.

Criminal Activities

• In 2016 Mark Johnson, a senior British banker of HSBC, was arrested at a New York City airport for currency benchmark rigging. Stuart Scott, former head of the HSBC foreign exchange cash trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was also charged. HSBC was fined $6 billion in 2015 over this scandal.

• In 2018, former director at HSBC Private Bank Suisse in Geneva was found guilty and fined $229,000 for money laundering in a Paris drug case.

• Also in 2018, HSBC was being investigated for tax evasion and money laundering and had actually publicly released that it had a provision of $632 million ready for a future fine and that they were cooperating fully.

• In 2012, HSBC itself was accused of banking billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), for which it had to pay a record $1.9 billion, with no form of regulated control on the bank afterwards but rather an agreement with the DOJ that the bank itself would install a 5 year independent monitor. As the New York Times put it: "Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system."