HSBC, JPMorgan, StanChart and others processed trillions of dollars of transactions despite concerns over potential crimes, reports say

Name: HSBC sees second-quarter profits plunge by 82 per cent thanks to coronavirus
Uploaded: 2020-09-21T07:27:49.000Z
Duration: 2 min 5 s
Description: HSBC sees second-quarter profits plunge by 82 per cent thanks to coronavirus

Top banks processed trillions of dollars of transactions identified as suspicious, according to International Consortium for Investigative Journalists review

Disclosure raises questions about effectiveness of government efforts to stamp out money laundering

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HSBC and Standard Chartered have previously paid billions of dollars in fines over failures in their anti-money-laundering programmes. Photo: Sun Yeung

Chad Bray

Published: 3:27pm, 21 Sep 2020Updated: 11:22pm, 22 Sep 2020

Some of the world’s biggest banks, including HSBC, JPMorgan Chase and Standard Chartered, moved trillions of dollars identified as being potentially tied to money laundering or other crimes despite raising concerns about those transactions in filings with US regulators, according to media reports on Sunday.

The disclosures again raised questions about the success of government efforts to stamp out the flow of illicit funds around the globe and the effectiveness of internal anti-money-laundering compliance systems, which global banks have spent tens of billions of dollars to revamp in the past decade.

Shares of HSBC and Standard Chartered fell sharply in Hong Kong on Monday after the media reports, with HSBC’s stock, at one point, trading at its lowest level since 1995.

HSBC declined 2.9 per cent to HK$30.05 in morning trading in Hong Kong on Monday, while Standard Chartered fell 2.7 per cent to HK$36.20. The Hang Seng Index fell 1.4 per cent.

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HSBC sees second-quarter profits plunge by 82 per cent thanks to coronavirus

The reporting was based on more than 2,100 so-called suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by banks and financial institutions between 1999 and 2017 with the US Department of Treasury’s Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that were obtained by Buzzfeed News and shared with the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).