HSBC, one of the largest European banking giants, was found guilty of laundering money from illegal sources. U.S. officials accused the bank of laundering money to Mexican drug traffickers and breaking the code of sanction against operations in some countries, Business Today reported.
HSBC has been fined $1.9 billion, the largest fine that has ever been levied on any firm, said BBC news.
The bank has admitted to all the accusations and has duly apologized for the same.
"We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again." Stuart Gulliver, chief executive of HSBC said to BBC.
HSBC admitted that it had been unsuccessful in maintaining a code of diligence and conduct. It was also accused of sanction infringements where it was prohibited to conduct any kind of business with customers of countries like Iran, Sudan, Burma, Cuba and Libya.
"The HSBC settlement sends a powerful wake-up call to multinational banks about the consequences of disregarding their anti-money laundering obligations," Senator Carl Levin told the Yahoo news.
The revelations of the HSBC controversy came in right after British rival bank, Standard Chartered Plc was found guilty of sanction breach leading the bank to pay a fine of $327 million.
HSBC had been under suspicion since 2008 when it was accused of holding transactions with a local doctor in West Virginia who used the money to commit Medicare fraud. Investigations had started off since then, which led the prosecutors to believe that there was more to the story, as per the documents analyzed by Reuters.
The Justice department of U.S. is trying to look for alternatives of penalizing HSBC without affecting the economic activity and jobs that the bank caters, reported ABC News."Our goal here is not to bring HSBC down. I wouldn't say it's too big to prosecute. I'm not going to say that. ... I don't think the bank thinks it got off easy," said Lanny Breuer, assistant Attorney General for the division of Crime.
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