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Drug Bank HSBC, Protected by DOJ, Will Be Dragged to Court by India

Printable version / Version imprimable

EIRNS—Pressure should increase for the rejection of Barack Obama’s nomination of Loretta Lynch as U.S. Attorney General, given the rising clamour against the crimes of HSBC, the British bank which Lynch slapped on the wrist in 2012. At that time, Lynch, then U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, signed a deferred prosecution agreement with HSBC for massive laundering of drug money and terror-financing funds through the bank. Sen. Carl Levin, whose committee had exhaustively documented HSBC’s money-laundering crimes, and others decried the Holder Justice Department’s decision not to touch HSBC’s executives or its U.S. banking license.

Now, following revelations that Lynch and Holder knew in 2012 that HSBC’s Swiss branch was also organizing and abetting tax evasion for the wealthy on a large scale, there are new revelations from India.

HSBC is going to be charged by the Modi government with abetting tax evasion in India by way of operating accounts of its citizens in its overseas branch without proper authority, Press Trust of India reported today. It is alleged that representatives of HSBC India, which has employees based in America, assured customers that details of their accounts would not be reported to tax officials. The latest revelations came even as the bank issued full-page advertisements in British newspapers as a public apology after reports that its Swiss banking arm had helped a thousand wealthy clients avoid tax.

India will thus join Argentina, another BRICS-allied nation which is prosecuting this criminal mega-bank with full force, and demanding return of more than $3 billion which HSBC sequestered from Argentina in order to evade taxes.

While the EIR had exposed the British involvement in the November 2008 attack run through the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), on Mumbai hotels, there exists a possibility of exposing the HSBC’s involvement in that terrorist act which killed 164 people. The Afghan opium/heroin run through the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Pakistani ISI kingpin Dawood Ibrahim, who operated these terrorist networks, laundered billions of dollars through HSBC’s branches in Dubai. The laundered money had helped the terrorists on the ground to make the Mumbai attack.

HSBC’s links to the terrorist-financiers have long been established. A U.S. Senate investigative committee report of 2013 revealed that the terrorist-funding Saudi Al Rajhi Bank was still then dealing with al-Qaeda, and laundering al-Qaeda money through HSBC.