What a view | French documentary Banksters takes HSBC, China’s financial sector to task

In the documentary Banksters (2017; but only recently added to Amazon Prime), or Les Gangsters de la Finance according to its original title, French filmmakers Jérôme Fritel and Marc Roche repeatedly drag HSBC over the coals of shame in light of 2015’s Panama Papers and Swiss Leaks scandals. You’d be excused for thinking the bank was the sole villain therein, as various talking heads are produced to excoriate it for its complicity in helping “heads of state … government leaders, entrepreneurs, show business personalities” evade tax by establishing offshore shell companies.

According to Fritel and Roche, the bank’s behaviour was – some might say is – “abominable”. “From tax evasion to money laundering for the mafia and manipulation of currency, HSBC has its hands in a variety of illegal activities,” we are told. Consequently, it has already paid a headline-grabbing fine of US$1.9 billion, but even that has divided opinion.

A former investigator dismisses the amount (a month’s profits) as “a parking ticket given to the wrong people” – not bank officials, but shareholders. On the other hand, in a performance unlikely to endear him to Joe Public, familiar Hong Kong business face and HSBC shareholder Allan Zeman throws up his hands and says he “felt angry at the regulators because the amount was obscene”. Then, in a moment of staggering Trumpishness, he adds: “When you’re dealing in Mexico … yes, there is a lot of drug money and it was just part of banking and money just got transferred around all over the world … they just maybe were naive.”