HSBC officials noted the company had been reported to be involved in “Ponzi activity” and said it was transacting in “large round dollar amounts for no known legitimate business or economic purpose.” WCM777 had sent or received 799 wire transfers totaling about $6 million within three months.
spanned the globe, from Latin America to South Asia. Teams fanned out to many of HSBC’s more than 60 countries and territories, interviewing employees, reviewing data and documents, and inspecting policy handbooks. A key employee told investigators that he was too scared to talk because he had received a death threat before his interview.
The bank first opened its doors in Hong Kong in 1865, as the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, to finance trade between Europe and Asia. The region still accounts for two-thirds of HSBC’s profits. The bank is so deeply interwoven with the culture of that former colony that its headquarters are a kind of landmark, where passersby pat the paws of its distinctive lion statues for good luck.
A contractor who was not a part of the monitor’s team, but who was sent to Hong Kong in 2014 to assess HSBC’s anti–money laundering programs, recalled arriving at the bank’s skyscraper overlooking Victoria Harbor. The contractor was made to sit in the lobby for nearly an hour before being allowed upstairs.
In some cases, SARs allege, compliance officers in HSBC’s US operation raised concerns about customers in Hong Kong, only to be told that even the most basic information — who owned the company in question, where it was located, or what type of business it conducted — couldn’t be shared or was never collected in the first place.
When investigators for HSBC’s US operations asked their counterparts in Hong Kong for the name of Trade Leader’s owner, the Americans received a curt response: “None available.”“Mad Mondays” and “Whacky Wednesdays”when the bank was under strict scrutiny, it hired thousands of new compliance workers and brought in teams of consultants.
In July 2016, HSBC promised the whistleblower — whom BuzzFeed News has interviewed extensively — an exhaustive review by the bank’s Global Internal Investigations Group. “The latest Cherkasky report probably should have set hairs [sic] running,” the whistleblower emailed to an HSBC tipline in June 2016, “as it’s obvious to everyone on the ground that there’s no way it will meet” the monitor’s deadlines.