HSBC - more unpleasant goings on

www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2015/feb/09/hsbcs-presbyterian-principles-forgotten-in-the-global-dash-for-cash

Just read this in the Guardian.
Apparently Lord Green is an ordained vicar, presumably hoping to go to heaven.

So how many of you who still have an HSBC a/c will be walking.
I left some years ago when it was discovered how they were laundering Mexican drug cartel money.
Then I went to the Coop and we all know what happened there. So now it's Santander.
Nobody in power is going to do a thing. The only thing that will hurt them is, if everyone takes their money out.

I'm off to Santander tomorrow...

I'm thinking of transferring mine to the P.O.

Santander was fined £1.5m in 2012 for failing to inform customers that some of their financial products were less safe because they had limited protection.

It was fined £12.4 m.in 2014 for "widespread investment failings".

It seems that virtually all the banks have been heavily criticised and fined for one or more failings.

This is what other countries are doing about it.

"Outside the UK, calls multiplied throughout the day for investigations into events at HSBC’s Swiss subsidiary, whose inner workings have been exposed in data covering the period from 2005 to 2007.

• In Belgium, where HSBC Switzerland is under investigation over tax fraud allegations, a judge is considering issuing international arrest warrants for directors of the Swiss division of the bank.

• In Switzerland, senior politicians called for investigations by regulators into the scandal.

• In the United States, a leading member of the Senate banking committee asked the US government to explain what action it took after receiving a massive cache of the leaked bank accounts.

• In Denmark, the government said it would seek the names of its citizens who may have used Swiss bank accounts to avoid domestic taxes.

• In France, which has also launched an investigation, the prime minister, Manuel Valls, said he was determined to fight tax evasion and would continue to take action at home and on a European level.

Evidence that the bank colluded with hundreds of clients to conceal undeclared “black” accounts and used its Geneva branch to hand out bricks of cash in a variety of currencies from euros to pounds has been sitting in the hands of tax officials around the world since May 2010.

While France, Belgium, Spain, the US and Argentina have launched legal proceedings against HSBC and its high net worth clients, the UK’s tax authority has in five years used the data to bring only one prosecution.

Meanwhile, neither HM Revenue and Customs, the Serious Fraud Office nor the Financial Conduct Authority have taken action against HSBC."

I'm in Nationwide, Eloethan. I'm sure you can find something bad about them.

I've been with Nationwide for at least 20 years. It's not a bank but offers the same range of services ( minus advice on tax evasion and selling PPI). I don't understand why anyway banks with a bank ( iyswim).

I do almost all my banking on line and their mobile app is great

If they're all crooked I might as well bank with a crooked one that rewards me for it ....I'd use the Post Office but out village post office is probably going to close down in the next year or so. I did consider Nationwide but when I showed the financial adviser there the deal that I would get with Santander he said there was no way that he could match it. It would only pay me to switch to them if I travelled abroad a lot [can't explain why; don't understand finance much].

Part of one of NWs current accounts includes free cash withdrawals abroad - that's probsbly what he meant. Their credit card ( which I use home and abroad) offers a better deal than other credit cards when using abroad ( and gives cash back)but I use them because I despise and loathe the high street banks.

I think it's because you can use your card abroad without it costing you, Tegan. You can also get free travel insurance. I do not really know as I do not travel abroad, either.

This is part of the Guardian timeline about HSBC and Lord Green.

"In May 2010, HMRC was handed a reconstructed UK version of the data by the French. But while tax inspectors began ploughing through their evidence at their London headquarters, a change of British government was taking place.

Cameron’s Conservative-led coalition came to power. A couple of weeks later, it was reported that Green would step down from his £1.25m-a-year HSBC job, and by August Cameron was reported to have persuaded him to take on the post of trade minister.

“In Stephen we will be appointing a minister with a long career as a leading international banker,” the Lib Dem business secretary, Vince Cable, said in a statement issued after the announcement: “One of the few to emerge with credit from the recent financial crisis, and somebody who has set out a powerful philosophy for ethical business.”

A source close to Cable said the welcoming remarks on Green referred to HSBC’s position as the sole major UK bank not requiring a bailout in the financial crisis, and to Green’s writings and speeches on ethical business."

This is all on the day that Cameron has told bosses to give Britain a pay rise. Not enough to open a Swiss bank account, I presume.