HSBC

<h3>=</h3><div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/11/04/wilful-ignorance-indigenous-delegation-incredulous-at-bankers-attitude-to-fossil-fuel-impacts/">https://www.desmog.com/2022/11/04/wilful-ignorance-indigenous-delegation-incredulous-at-bankers-attitude-to-fossil-fuel-impacts/</a></div><div>Indigenous delegates said they had been amazed at the “wilful ignorance” they encountered when demanding global banks cease financing new fossil fuel projects on their ancestral lands in what is today North America.The representatives of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and the Nahua nation in Mexico met with executives from HSBC, Barclays, and Credit Suisse in London this week to urge them to stop backing oil and gas pipelines and fracked gas export terminals.  Christopher Basaldú, a member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe, said he had been appalled at the lack of awareness of the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2015/06/04/epa-study-fracking-contaminates-water-supplies/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">pollution caused by fracking</a> — a high-pressure drilling technique that has revolutionised America’s energy industry, but caused huge environmental damage.  “I had to give a fracking 101 lesson to this bank official. It’s appalling their level of ignorance. They really do not know how potentially permanently destructive fracking is to groundwater,” Basaldú told DeSmog. “It’s incomprehensible to me that these wealthy, privileged, European people can be so wilfully ignorant and draw such tremendous salaries.”Fracking works by using contained explosions and a mix of water, sand, and chemicals to fragment oil and gas-bearing layers of shale rock. The technique can taint groundwater, degrade landscapes and threaten wildlife, according to <a href="https://www.wilderness.org/news/article/truth-about-fracking-and-environment" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">environmental organisations</a>.In addition, fracking sites release a toxic stew of air pollution that can cause severe headaches, asthma symptoms, childhood leukemia, cardiac problems, and birth defects, and some of the 1,000-plus chemicals used in the process are known to cause cancer, according to a <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/issues/reduce-fracking-health-hazards#:_{:text=Fracking%20sites%20release%20a%20toxic,are%20known%20to%20cause%20cancer}" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">report</a> by the National Resources Defense Council. <h2 id="h-fossil-fight" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fossil Fight</h2>Basaldú is fighting plans by Houston-based oil and gas company NextDecade to build a $10 billion facility on the South Texas coast near his hometown of Brownsville. The scheme would supercool fracked gas from the Permian Basin for export as liquefied natural gas (LNG).Community members say the Central Park-sized project — known as Rio Grande LNG — would blanket low-income Latinx and Indigenous communities with harmful air pollution, cause irreversible harm to precious wetlands, threaten endangered wildlife, and accelerate climate breakdown via its associated carbon emissions.  The future of Rio Grande LNG and other planned export terminals had looked <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2020/10/08/cameron-lng-export-terminals-financials/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">looked increasingly in doubt</a> as demand for energy slumped during the COVID-19 pandemic. In November, 2020, French utility Engie dealt the sector a further blow when it pulled out of negotiations over a long-term deal to buy LNG cargoes from Rio Grande LNG amid reports that the French government was concerned over <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/04/26/fossil-fuel-companies-promoting-lower-carbon-responsibly-sourced-oil-and-gas/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">methane emissions</a> from the Permian Basin.But the picture has since changed dramatically as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a European scramble for alternatives to Russian gas — bringing once moribund projects back to life. In May, NextDecade <a href="https://investors.next-decade.com/news-releases/news-release-details/nextdecade-and-engie-execute-175-mtpa-lng-sale-and-purchase" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">announced</a> that Engie had returned to the negotiating table and signed a 15-year contract to buy cargoes from Rio Grande LNG starting as early as 2026. The project took another step forward in September, when Credit Suisse helped NextDecade launch a private share placement in anticipation of a final investment decision, Offshore Energy <a href="https://www.offshore-energy.biz/nextdecade-launches-private-placement-eyeing-rio-grande-lng-fid/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">reported</a>.  Barclays and HSBC are linked to the scheme through their role as big financiers of oil majors ExxonMobil and Shell, which have also signed contracts to purchase shipments from Rio Grande LNG, according to a <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/2022-10/RGV_LNG_2022_FINAL_WEB_0.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">report</a> by the Sierra Club and allied organisations. The two banks also have smaller exposures to Engie, according to <a href="https://www.bankingonclimatechaos.org/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Banking on Climate Chaos</a>, a report by advocacy groups.Barclays, HSBC and Credit Suisse declined to comment. <h2 id="h-indigenous-resistance" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Indigenous Resistance</h2>Basaldú made the trip to London with Bekah Hinojosa, an artist and community organiser who has also been campaigning against Rio Grande LNG since the project was proposed eight years ago, and serves as the Sierra Club’s Gulf Coast campaign representative. The pair were accompanied by Oliveria Montès Lazcano, the coordinator of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples in the central Mexican state of Puebla. Lazcano is fighting TransCanada’s project to build the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2018/01/02/mexico-standing-rock-sempra-transcanada-indigenous-resistance/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Tuxpan-Tula pipeline</a> to import gas to central Mexico from Texas. HSBC, Credit Suisse, and Barclays finance TransCanada, campaigners say.Indigenous networks have been mobilising increasingly effective opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure in recent years, playing key roles in the defeat of flagship projects in North America including the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/01/20/keystone-xl-pipeline-canceled-biden-future-fossil-fuels/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Keystone XL tar sands pipeline</a> and the Atlantic Coast gas pipeline.  A report by the Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change International <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/09/08/indigenous-climate-resistance-stopping-fossil-fuels-line-3-emissions-report/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">published last year</a> found that Indigenous communities resisting more than 20 fossil fuel projects analysed had stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least 25 percent of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions.With the world’s 60 largest private banks extending $4.6 trillion of finance for fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, according to <a href="https://www.bankingonclimatechaos.org/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Banking on Climate Chaos</a>, indigenous groups are increasingly seeking to persuade bankers to pull the plug on polluting projects.In 2017 French Bank BNP Paribas pledged to stop granting dedicated financial support for fracked gas pipelines and export terminals in North America several months after a previous delegation of Indigenous leaders from South Texas visited Paris and gained significant attention, speaking on radio shows and at rallies and shareholder meetings. Indigenous groups from Ecuador and Peru scored further concessions in 2021 by persuading BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, ING, and other European banks to stop financing the export of crude oil from the Ecuadorian Amazon after advocacy groups Stand.earth and Amazon Watch <a href="https://www.stand.earth/latest/new-report-reveals-european-banks-financing-trade-controversial-amazon-oil-us" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">published data</a> revealing their multi-billion dollar exposure to the trade. ...</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div></div></div><div>=</div><div>desmog 2022</div><div><h2 id="h-don-t-worry-just-adapt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Don’t Worry, Just Adapt!</h2>Another narrative emerging from the denial and delayer camp is that “adapting” to climate change will be our lifeline: Those perpetuating it end up downplaying the impacts of the climate crisis because they say we will be able to adapt to it.In a May 31 Slate <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/alex-epstein-fossil-future-climate-change-argument.html?via=rss" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">article</a> about <a href="https://www.desmog.com/alex-epstein/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">Alex Epstein</a>’s new book Fossil Future, which advocates for fossil fuels, Nitish Pahwa writes: “The new style of climate denial is here: It’s not that carbon emissions aren’t increasing, or aren’t warming the world, but look, you’re doing fine right now, right? So, we’ll be just fine!”On May 20, Stuart Kirk, the head of responsible investing for HSBC’s asset management division, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfNamRmje-s" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">said at a Financial Times conference,</a> “Who cares if Miami is six meters underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six meters underwater for ages, and that’s a really nice place. We will cope with it.” Kirk was later <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/hsbc-suspends-executive-for-climate-comments-11653313199" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">suspended</a> for his comments.[vid]stuart Kirk, head of responsible investing for HSBC’s asset management division, was suspended for his comments to investors in which he downplayed the risks of climate change.This argument implies that working to slow climate change is futile and offers adaptation as “the only possible response” to the climate crisis, according to Roberts and his colleagues in their “Discourses of delay” analysis.</div><div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30052022/watchdogs-tackle-the-murky-world-of-greenwash/">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30052022/watchdogs-tackle-the-murky-world-of-greenwash/</a>Watchdogs Tackle the Murky World of GreenwashGovernment enforcers are on the hunt for companies making misleading claims about their so-called ‘eco-friendly’ products.By Patrick Temple-West, The Financial TimesMay 30, 2022
RelatedQ&A: The Activist Investor Who Shook Up the Board at ExxonMobil, on How—or if—it Changed the Company   From dubious claims about bamboo-based products to climate funds that are not quite what they seem, regulators have been increasing their scrutiny of corporate claims to be green.Financial watchdogs worldwide have been taking aim at so-called “greenwashing” as investing in line with environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles surges in popularity.During a punishing first three months of the year for markets, assets held in sustainable funds fell by 4 percent, according to research agency Morningstar. They still proved more resilient than the wider U.S. market, though, where assets fell by 6 percent during the quarter.But investors might not be getting what they think they are paying for. While some markets have long had unambiguous rules about which eco-claims are acceptable—“organic” food, for example, must meet very strict labeling criteria—the situation with ESG funds is less clear cut.That has enabled some fund managers, eager for investor cash, to overstate their ESG credentials. Now, however, financial regulators are fighting back.In March, Joe Longo, the chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic), said his agency was looking closely at fund managers that offer green products to check that they actually do what they claim.Company boards, he said, also had to assess whether their businesses’ environmental disclosures and green product promotions accurately reflected corporate practices. Greenwashing, he added, was “very much in our sights.”Singapore, too, is probing the overlap between practice and promotion. It is developing ESG requirements covering investment funds’ names, prospectuses and disclosures.“We expect asset managers to ‘walk the talk’ and ensure that their sustainability commitments reflect actual capabilities and practices on the ground,” said Tan Keng Heng, executive director of the country’s Monetary Authority, in January. “Greenwashing poses a real and present danger to our collective efforts to date and ambitions in the long run.”Other regulators are using rules already in place to target companies over greenwashing.A draft recommendation from the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority, for example, recently proposed a warning for HSBC about advertisements touting its green accomplishments.These ads—which were displayed at bus stops last year—said the bank was financing clients’ net zero initiatives and planting lots of trees to capture carbon. The ASA draft said that people seeing them would conclude that HSBC was making “a positive overall environmental contribution as a company”—whereas, in fact, it also finances companies with big carbon footprints.Some watchdogs have already taken action.Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Brazilian miner Vale for allegedly making false and misleading claims before the fatal collapse of the Brumadinho dam in 2019. Vale, it said, had misled investors and the public through its ESG disclosures. The company is fighting the SEC’s complaint in court.The Vale case may be a harbinger of more to come. The SEC has set up a task force in its enforcement division to hunt for material gaps or misstatements in climate risk disclosures.According to Christina Thomas, a former SEC staffer who is now a partner at law firm Mayer Brown, the task force is “not only focused on public companies but also looking at investment advisers as well.” Following the Vale complaint, it is “certainly looking for more cases,” she added.Separately, SEC chair Gary Gensler has said the regulator is working on a rule that will require funds with names containing terms such as “green” or “sustainable” to disclose how their investments satisfy those descriptions.For ESG, “there’s currently a wide range of what asset managers might mean by certain terms and what criteria they might use,” noted Gensler. “It’s easy to tell if milk is fat-free, it might be time to make it easier to tell whether a fund is really what they say they are.”=</div><div>=</div><div>wamu</div><div>2020 predatory</div><div>...Later in 2006, they refinanced the house with their lender, HSBC.</div><div> The couple didn't realize they couldn't afford the ballooning mortgage payments until 2010.</div><div> That's when Harris had to wait a few weeks for a multimillion-dollar business contract to be signed for a non-profit that she runs.</div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For the first two years of their loan, their monthly payment was about $2,600. Then the interest rate almost doubled, and, by 2008 they had a balloon payment of more than $8,500 a month.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"We found out then that we was in trouble," Harris said.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to a 2011 audit of the couple's mortgage, they had been the target of a predatory loan — like many Black homeowners in the county during that time. For three months, they tried to get their lender to approve a three-month delay in repaying the loan. Once Harris' business contract went through, they tried to back pay their mortgage. But the lender never responded.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It wasn't until 2014 that the couple received a notice with intent to foreclose. "The court proceeded with the foreclosure," she said. "The judge rubber-stamped the whole process."<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When asked about the case, a representative from Prince George's County Circuit Court responded with a written statement that it followed all local, state and federal mandates.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As the couple was trying to hold a mediation with the bank, Harris was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to get a double mastectomy. Her husband was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. They say they never got a mediation with the bank, but the couple continued to fight the foreclosure in court.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 2017, they hired Attorney Phillip Robinson to help them with their case pro-bono. A year later, they lost their case in circuit court and got an appeal. By early 2019, they were getting eviction notices. Harris says she already saw many of her friends and neighbors get evicted and didn't want to go through the same process.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"They would junk it. They would throw it. They would just destroy your stuff," Harris said. "And that scared us. That scared us to death. I then started looking for some place to go."<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The couple moved to a rental house in Charles County just south of Prince George's. They lost their appeal in August of 2019 even with evidence showing that the bank didn't have the Harris's note or right to foreclose on them, according to Robinson.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Harris has a word of warning to other homeowners who are still fighting their cases.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"The best thing that you can do to preserve you and your family is to go find a nice rental property and start over because you're not going to win," Harris said.<h3 class="edTag" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 35px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; max-width: 680px; position: relative; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">'I Used My Own House As A Guinea Pig'</h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One person that's been able to help people like Harris is Liz Johnson with the county's NAACP's Strategic Housing Solutions. Johnson has had her own issues with predatory lending which led her to be an advocate for others....<h3>=amazonwatch 320
see divest, greenwash, hypocrisyLast week, we released a groundbreaking report exposing five major financial institutions – JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, BlackRock, HSBC and Goldman Sachs – which continue to pour billions into oil extraction in the western Amazon despite their recently celebrated climate commitments.</h3><h3>=</h3><h3>A Blind Eye to Money Laundering</h3>

HSBC

<h4>The details</h4>

A <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/hsbcs-money-laundering-lapses-by-the-numbers"> scathing report</a> released by the U.S. Senate this July alleged that HSBC failed over the last decade to perform basic anti-money-laundering protections and evaded Treasury sanctions against Iran, Myanmar, and others. The report says HSBC allowed billions in cash to flow between Mexico and the U.S. despite warnings drug money was involved, opened Cayman Island accounts for customers with little-to-no background information, and provided cash to banks with terror ties. The report also faulted the government’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for taking virtually no action against the bank despite being aware of problems for years.

Well, we know who’s not been hurt: Mexican drug cartels, Saudi Arabian banks, and others who may have moved money with little scrutiny.

<h4>Who’s taken a fall</h4>

HSBC’s head of compliance <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/07/18/hsbc-compliance-senate-idINL2E8IH35Y20120718"> resigned</a> July 18.

<h4>Penalties</h4>

$27.5 million, in a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/26/us-hsbc-mexico-idUSBRE86P0XM20120726"> fine to Mexican regulators</a>.

In a recent financial disclosure, HSBC said it had put aside $700 million as a "<a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/hsbc-sets-aside-2-billion-for-legal-woes-as-profit-falls/">best estimate</a>" of what it may have to pay U.S. regulators. The Justice Department, OCC, Treasury, and others <a href="http://www.hsbc.com/1/PA_esf-ca-app-content/content/assets/investor_relations/hsbc2012ira0.pdf"> are investigating</a>.

The bank has apologized and promised reforms are already underway. (It made similar claims <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/03/us-hsbcusa-probes-idUSBRE8420FX20120503?feedType=RSS&feedName=specialReports&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=354887"> back in 2003</a>, when it was cited for similar violations.)

<h4>Key Reads</h4>

Here’s the <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/400860-senate-report-on-hsbc.html"> Senate’s full report</a>. If you don’t have time for all 340 pages, Reuters has long been <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/03/us-hsbcusa-probes-idUSBRE8420FX20120503?feedType=RSS&feedName=specialReports&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=354887"> covering </a><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/14/us-hsbc-compliance-delaware-idUSBRE86C18H20120714">the bank’s lapses</a>. And if you want a quick overview of the report itself, we broke out the <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/hsbcs-money-laundering-lapses-by-the-numbers"> most remarkable stats</a>.

</div>

=tedtalk<span class="talk-transcriptparatext" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; border-left-width: 3px; border-left-style: double; border-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin-left: -13px; padding-left: 10px;">And then there's that cliché, the African dictator or minister or official. There's Teodorín Obiang.So his daddy is president for life of Equatorial Guinea, a West African nation that has exportedbillions of dollars of oil since the 1990s and yet has a truly appalling human rights record. The vast majority of its people are living in really miserable poverty despite an income per capita that's on a par with that of Portugal. So Obiang junior, well, he buys himself a $30 million mansion in Malibu, California. I've been up to its front gates. I can tell you it's a magnificent spread. He bought an €18 million art collection that used to belong to fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, a stack of fabulous sports cars, some costing a million dollars apiece -- oh, and a Gulfstream jet, too. Now get this: Until recently, he was earning an official monthly salary of less than 7,000 dollars.<data class="talk-transcriptparatime" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; text-align: right; margin-left: -30px; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: -4em; width: 4em;">2:08</data><span class="talk-transcriptparatext" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; border-left-width: 3px; border-left-style: double; border-left-color: transparent; margin-left: -13px; padding-left: 10px;">And there's Dan Etete. Well, he was the former oil minister of Nigeria under President Abacha,and it just so happens he's a convicted money launderer too. We've spent a great deal of timeinvestigating a $1 billion -- that's right, a $1 billion — oil deal that he was involved with, and what we found was pretty shocking, but more about that later....And in the years that I've been, and we've all been campaigning and investigating, I've repeatedly seen that what makes corruption on a global, massive scale possible, well it isn't just greed or the misuse of power or that nebulous phrase "weak governance." I mean, yes, it's all of those, but corruption, it's made possible by the actions of global facilitators.<data class="talk-transcriptparatime" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; text-align: right; margin-left: -30px; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: -4em; width: 4em; font-weight: bold;">4:50</data><span class="talk-transcriptparatext" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; border-left-width: 3px; border-left-style: double; border-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin-left: -13px; padding-left: 10px;">So let's go back to some of those people I talked about earlier. Now, they're all people we've investigated, and they're all people who couldn't do what they do alone. Take Obiang junior. Well, he didn't end up with high-end art and luxury houses without help. He did business with global banks. A bank in Paris held accounts of companies controlled by him, one of which was used to buy the art, and American banks, well, they funneled 73 million dollars into the States,some of which was used to buy that California mansion. And he didn't do all of this in his own name either. He used shell companies. He used one to buy the property, and another, which was in somebody else's name, to pay the huge bills it cost to run the place.<data class="talk-transcriptparatime" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; text-align: right; margin-left: -30px; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: -4em; width: 4em;">5:35</data><span class="talk-transcriptparatext" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; border-left-width: 3px; border-left-style: double; border-left-color: transparent; margin-left: -13px; padding-left: 10px;">And then there's Dan Etete. Well, when he was oil minister, he awarded an oil block now worth over a billion dollars to a company that, guess what, yeah, he was the hidden owner of. Now, it was then much later traded on with the kind assistance of the Nigerian government -- now I have to be careful what I say here — to subsidiaries of Shell and the Italian Eni, two of the biggest oil companies around.<data class="talk-transcriptparatime" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; text-align: right; margin-left: -30px; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: -4em; width: 4em;">6:05</data><span class="talk-transcriptparatext" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; border-left-width: 3px; border-left-style: double; border-left-color: transparent; margin-left: -13px; padding-left: 10px;">So the reality is, is that the engine of corruption, well, it exists far beyond the shores of countrieslike Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria or Turkmenistan. This engine, well, it's driven by our international banking system, by the problem of anonymous shell companies, and by the secrecy that we have afforded big oil, gas and mining operations, and, most of all, by the failure of our politicians to back up their rhetoric and do something really meaningful and systemic to tackle this stuff.<data class="talk-transcriptparatime" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; text-align: right; margin-left: -30px; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: -4em; width: 4em;">6:36</data>Now let's take the banks first. Well, it's not going to come as any surprise for me to tell you that banks accept dirty money, but they prioritize their profits in other destructive ways too. For example, in Sarawak, Malaysia. Now this region, it has just five percent of its forests left intact. Five percent. So how did that happen? Well, because an elite and its facilitators have been making millions of dollars from supporting logging on an industrial scale for many years. So we sent an undercover investigator in to secretly film meetings with members of the ruling elite, and the resulting footage, well, it made some people very angry, and you can see that on YouTube,but it proved what we had long suspected, because it showed how the state's chief minister,despite his later denials, used his control over land and forest licenses to enrich himself and his family. And HSBC, well, we know that HSBC bankrolled the region's largest logging companiesthat were responsible for some of that destruction in Sarawak and elsewhere. The bank violated its own sustainability policies in the process, but it earned around 130 million dollars. Now shortly after our exposé, very shortly after our exposé earlier this year, the bank announced a policy review on this. And is this progress? Maybe, but we're going to be keeping a very close eye on that case....==

</div>