Bank

Did DOJ Ignore Trail Of Evidence In HSBC Banking Scandal?

February 10, 2015 Paul Lewis, www.theguardian.com Educate! Bank, Corruption, Law

The US government will come under intense pressure this week to explain what action it took after receiving a massive cache of leaked data that revealed how the Swiss banking arm of HSBC, the world’s second-largest bank, helped wealthy customers conceal billions of dollars of assets. The disclosure amounts to one of the biggest banking leaks in history shedding light on some 30,000 accounts holding almost $120bn (£78bn) of assets. Of those, around 2,900 clients were connected to the US, providing the IRS with a trail of evidence of potential American taxpayers who may have been hiding assets in Geneva.

HSBC Files: Swiss Bank Helped Clients Dodge Taxes, Hide Millions

February 9, 2015 David Leigh, James Ball, Juliette Garside and David Pegg, www.theguardian.com Educate! Bank, Finance and the Economy, Taxes

The Guardian’s evidence of a pattern of misconduct at HSBC in Switzerland is supported by the outcome of recent court cases in the US and Europe. The bank was named in the US as a co-conspirator for handing over “bricks” of $100,000 a time to American surgeon Andrew Silva in Geneva, so that he could illegally post cash back to the US. Another US client, Sanjay Sethi, pleaded guilty in 2013 to cheating the US tax authorities. He was one of a group of convicted HSBC clients. The prosecution said an HSBC banker promised “the undeclared account would allow [his] assets to grow tax-free, and bank secrecy laws in Switzerland would allow Sethi to conceal the existence of the account”.

State Of The Dream 2015: Underbanked & Overcharged

January 21, 2015 United For A Fair Economy, www.faireconomy.org Educate! Bank, Economic Justice, Finance and the Economy, Racial Justice

State of the Dream 2015: Underbanked and Overcharged is United for a Fair Economy's twelfth annual look at race, wealth, and inequality. This report finds that over one in five households (mostly Black, Latino, or Native American) are underserved by the banking industry, costing these households an average of $3,029 per year in fees and interest just to access their own money. This "wage theft" takes a total of $103 billion per year out of the communities that need it most. This report makes several recommendations that could expand access to accessible, affordable banking services, including expanding the role of the US Postal Service. By expanding postal banking services in 31,000 locations across the nation, we can increase access to important wealth-building tools in those communities that are currently underserved.

World Bankers Expect Protests Are Coming

July 19, 2014 Andrew Gavin Marshall, www.occupy.com Resist! Bank, Mass Movement, Resistance

These two groups – financial institutions and the consultants that advise them – play key roles in the spread of institutionalized corporate and financial power, and as such, warnings from these groups about the threat posed by “social unrest” carry particular weight as they are geared toward a particular audience: the global oligarchy itself. Organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank were responsible for forcing neoliberal economic “restructuring” on much of the developing world from the 1980s onwards, as the IMF and E.U. are currently imposing on Greece and large parts of Europe. The results have been and continue to be devastating for populations, while corporations and banks accumulate unprecedented wealth and power. As IMF austerity programs spread across the globe, poverty followed, and so too did protests and rebellion. Between 1976 and 1992, there were 146 protests against IMF-sponsored programs in 39 different countries around the world, often resulting in violent state repression of the domestic populations (cited explicitly by Firoze Manji and Carl O’Coill in “The Missionary Position: NGOs and Development in Africa,” International Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 3, 2002).

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