Asian regulators bare teeth in anti-money laundering enforcement

January 15, 2018 | BY

Katherine Jo

Financial institutions in the region are feeling the heat from increasingly aggressive regulatory actions following landmark AML cases involving Hong Kong and Chinese banks

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Back in 2012, British banking giant HSBC agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion settlement after a broad investigation by U.S. federal and state authorities found it to have violated federal laws by laundering money from Mexican drug trafficking and processing banned transactions on behalf of Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Burma. This settlement, a combination of forfeitures and civil penalties, illustrated that the London-based financial powerhouse allegedly deliberately channeled hundreds of millions of dollars of prohibited transactions through its U.S. operations for a number of years.

Fast forward to 2015, HSBC was again placed under formal criminal investigation by French magistrates as to whether its Swiss private bank was assisting wealthy clients to avoid taxes.