HSBC's share price has fallen to its lowest level since 1995 amid allegations of money laundering.

[Warpy]

On Monday in Hong Kong, the shares fell more than 5.3% to close at HK$29.30. In London they fell by a similar amount.

Leaked documents from the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), involving about $2tn of transactions have revealed how some of the world's biggest banks have allowed criminals to move dirty money around the world.

Shares in rival banks named in the papers have also been hit. At lunchtime, Standard Chartered and Barclays were down by 5% and 6% respectively, while Germany's Deutsche Bank was down 8%.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54230733

25 years of stock gains wiped out in a day is an incredibly big deal. HSBC and Deutsche Bank were two of the biggest players in a series of scams resulting in massive money laundering by rogue states, dictators, drug cartels, human trafficking, and other criminal enterprises worldwide. US banks are awash in drug money, that story broke before the 2008 crash.

The only place the scandal was reported last night was NBC, which reported on money laundering by N. Korea through US banks.

This is a huge and developing story.

https://www.occrp.org/en/the-fincen-files/

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/fincen-files (They brpke the story first in the US)

https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/about-the-fincen-files-investigation/

[empedocles]

1. Pretty volatile looking stock chart for a big bank

[Budi]

2. ... 108 other media partners in 88 countries, spent 16 months organizing and analyzing the documents

From the ICIJ link:

SNIP

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, together with BuzzFeed News and 108 other media partners in 88 countries, spent 16 months organizing and analyzing the documents, dubbed the FinCEN Files. ICIJ and its partners collected additional leaked documents from sources, reading through voluminous court and archival records and interviewing hundreds of people, including crime fighters and crime victims.

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The world needs more watchdogs of the professional level as these people.

Cripe! 😬
Thank You to the amazing groups of global warriors of truth.

"ICIJ & Buzzfeed & 108 other media partners in 88 countries, spent 16 months.."....

Wow.

[Warpy]

3. Maybe once they do this job they'll get bored and start

following up all the connections those terabytes of data from the Panama Papers gave them. It seems a lot of the evidence of the shell game big money was playing is out there.

I don't care if I'm eating fast food ketchup soup (which isn't bad, BTW) again. I want all those bastards to go down hard.

[Budi]

4. I've actually noticed a lot more references to Panama Papers with the...

..reveal of the #FINCEN papers.

Chatter about the 2, seem to be morphing into one massively connected outing of the global criminal network.

I can't imagine peeling back the layers & years these operations have existed.

[Warpy]

5. I think it really started when Clinton ended Glass-Steagall

which lifted a lot of regulatory onus off the banks. Nonexistent enforcement did the rest, all they had to do was generate the paperwork and they were home free, taking their cut skimmed off every illegal transaction, paperwork to be filed and forgotten.

[Budi]

6. Lots of debate on that. Assumptions have been one or the other with no definative point made.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/aug/19/bill-clinton/bill-clinton-glass-steagall-had-nothing-do-financi/

Bill Clinton: "Glass-Steagall repeal had nothing to do with financial crisis"


SNIP

Is this what caused the most recent financial crisis? There’s plenty of room for debate here, given that there isn’t a single what-caused-the-crisis narrative that every economist accepts.

It’s safe to say, though, that there is not a prominent group of economists who argue "but for the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall, the crisis would not have happened."

Politifact ~

-------

I take issue with the statement that 2016 Candidate Hillary Clinton refused to bring back GS.

This was a part of her 2016 platform. Though not wanting to reinstate it as it once was, She wanted to bring GS back with tighter regulations.

[Budi]

7. This FinCen matter began long before President Clinton.

Reagan, Bush 1...& who assassinated JFK.

The global criminal mob network made its way.

[Warpy]

8. While I agree that it had started offshore, especially in the UK, Germany, Hong Kong, and

especially Switzerland, with minor activity in the Caribbean it hadn't infected the big banks here as yet. Now they're all dependent on all that easy cash derived from human misery.

I remember hearing about major shananigans with the Vatican and Barclay's and one other bank in the 80s, mostly in the Boston press.

Banking deregulation was why I had no use for Clinton and have little for Biden, but both have been extremely fortunate in their enemies, who are far worse.

So yes, this garbage is longstanding, but the hoariest part is outside the US. We caught up quickly.