Financial Transparency Coalition

Fresh revelations from the Guardian today, paint an even bleaker picture of HSBC Geneva’s client list. According to the paper, the bank’s customers included those who faced allegations of drug-running, corruption, doping and money laundering. Over twenty years, Global Witness has campaigned to stop a lot of things, from blood diamonds to corrupt dictators, to the money flows that fuel conflict. It appears that HSBC has been playing its part in enabling the money flows that support such activities. In some cases, the Guardian claims to have evidence...

Late last year, David Cameron announced that the UK would put the names of the people who own and control British companies into the public domain – something that we at Global Witness have long been campaigning for, alongside other NGOs such as ONE and Christian Aid. Such transparency is important because it’s well known that people who want to hide dirty money use the anonymity provided by companies to do so. There are plenty of examples of British companies being abused in this way.

Every so often in campaigning, you experience a rare breakthrough moment where the project gathers steam and people start to listen in a way they haven’t before. We had one of those moments last summer. My colleagues and I had spent the last five years telling people that anonymous companies facilitate much of the corruption that we campaign to stop. Most people were sympathetic to our cause and surprised by what we told them, but in terms of real, hard change, it’s fair to say our calls fell largely on deaf ears. In 2013, things changed.

Reuters’ published a fascinating report today, ‘Out of Control at HSBC’. It draws on leaked documents from a number of criminal investigations into the bank that assert the bank violated U.S. anti-money laundering laws. The report confirms what Global Witness has been saying for several years: despite a global system of anti-money laundering laws, banks in practice fail to carry out their obligations to combat financial crime.