Wednesday, February 11, 2015

"HSBC Leaks Part II. Why so Few Criminal Convictions?"

A year ago our thinking on HSBC was:
HSBC are scum. And not very well run either....
And their mamas are dressing them funny.

Here the author is talking about criminal investigations of the clients not the bankers.

From The Bankers Umbrella:
Tar and feather ‘em all and hang ‘em high. That seems to be the popular public demand around the names within the HSBC files. The people want the blood of tax evaders and they have been lead to believe that they have found the smoking gun in the form of the HSBC files that have originated from the Falciani lists.

Yesterday I covered some of the things related to banking secrecy that are missing in the overall media discussion around the HSBC Files. Today, I’ll try to answer why you’re seeing so few criminal investigations and why you’re unlikely to see many successful convictions. I’ll tackle it from a UK perspective because that’s where we have the abundance of material, but the same issues that affect UK officials will affect all national authorities who try to go after the people whose names can be found in the files.

First of all it’s good to start off with some perspective. The HMRC has been widely criticised in the UK for a lack of general enthusiasm in going after the UK nationals in the HSBC Files, but it's fair to say that the HMRC is between a rock and a hard place.

The HSBC Files, according to reports, contained around 6000 UK names. Once they had gone through them and taken out duplicate accounts what they had left were around 3800 names. Yet there are very few criminal investigations ongoing. Why is that? ...MORE
Previously in our HSBC files:
HSBC, Drug Dealers and Gun runners 
HSBC May Require Additional $119 Billion Capital By 2019 (HSBC.a)
So a Sicilian mafioso walks into HSBC…
Standard Chartered Joins Barclays and HSBC as Scummiest Bankers on Earth (STAN.L)