Red-faced and Green all over
When David Cameron appeared on the Today programme recently and admitted that “there are problems in terms of lack of responsibility in the banking industry and we have to deal with those”, was his trade minister listening?
If he was, the prime minister’s half-hearted attempt to defend the variable administration of justice in Britain must have caused poor Lord (Stephen) Green, a former five-star banker with HSBC, no end of embarrassment.
Two days later the
Sunday Times reported how the UK taxman has told 800 HSBC customers that they are under investigation for “serious fraud” in the use of the bank’s Swiss accounts.
A number of wealthy Americans have already been convicted of major tax evasion through HSBC in Switzerland. They include a surgeon who picked up $100,000 “bricks” from his HSBC banker since the bank was closing down Americans’ accounts and didn’t want electronic transfers to reveal their existence. The surgeon then posted his cash home in 25 separate envelopes.
The bank is also being investigated over channelling funds belonging to Indians living in the US to accounts at HSBC India with the assurance that their existence wouldn’t be reported to the authorities.
All this might be thought to suggest that there’s something wrong at Britain’s biggest bank, as it did a couple of years ago when Swiss bank UBS’s American customers were found to be fiddling in their thousands using accounts in Zurich. The bank was turned over and settled criminal charges for $780m, plus details of all its dodgy accounts. Several of its bankers have been charged and some sent down for fraud, while the information has opened up investigations at other banks – what might be thought standard financial policing, in fact.
But things are done differently here in Britain. Last month George Osborne agreed a tax deal with Switzerland that promises British bankers no prosecutions over involvement in tax fraud (see last
Eye), much to the relief of the chairman of HSBC’s Swiss private banking operation until last year – the one that was handing out the bricks of cash. For he of course now happens to be Britain’s current trade minister secretary, Lord (Stephen) Green.
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