“HSBC Holdings Plc, smarting from a $1.9 billion fine for providing banking to money launderers and sanctions-dodgers, promised U.S. officials it would clean up its act.
Within a year, its reform efforts met resistance from leaders of HSBC’s U.S. investment-banking unit - some of whom mounted a campaign of bullying, footdragging and discrediting against in-house watchdogs, according to previously unreported details from a report by the bank’s court-appointed monitor.
HSBC agreed to submit to the monitor’s oversight in late 2012, as part of a pact with the U.S. Justice Department that required it to bolster its in-house controls. Armed with that directive, HSBC compliance officers singled out a half-dozen clients whose activities could put the London-based bank at risk --including a Saudi bank that had been linked to Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers - and advised the U.S. investment-banking division to consider dropping those relationships.”
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