British financial services firm HSBC has agreed to pay CHF40m ($43m) to settle a money laundering investigation lodged by Geneva authorities at its Swiss private bank.
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The settlement will end the four-month-long probe into HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) that alleged that the private bank may have enabled clients to conceal millions of dollars of assets helping them evade taxes.
Geneva’s chief prosecutor Yves Bertossa said: "HSBC for several years suffered organisational deficiencies in the fight against money laundering."
Geneva’s attorney-general Olivier Jornot said: "This affair shows the weakness of Swiss law in fighting the entry of criminal funds into the financial circuit.
"It’s easy to ask public prosecutors afterwards to carry out titanic investigations. But on the other hand when we have a law that practically doesn’t punish intermediaries accepting money of dubious origin, there is a problem."
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By GlobalDataHSBC has reduced its Swiss client base by almost 70%, from about 30,000 accounts in 2007 to some 10,000 in 2014.
