American Law Firms Building Class Suits against HSBC and Standard Chartered for Money Laundering

Labaton Sucharow and Schall Law have a record of pursuing legal claims against listed organizations. Both said that they have started investigating the blue chips of the industry when their share prices plunged on Monday due to leaked files. 

Class suits allow many claims against one defendant and they are very common in the US generally used against British firms. According to The Mail, HSBC has another £1.3 billion class suit claim for its involvement in a scheme for tax negligence.

Although HSBC suspected unusual activities, it continued to move dirty money for the clients as revealed by a cache of files last weekend. The bank file 2,100 suspicious activity reports (SARs) with FinCEN in the US Treasury Department from 2000 to 2017. 

Financial institutions are obligated to stop any transactions or shut down accounts if they have evidence of any nefarious activities. However, HSBC failed to take any action. The bank’s shares decreased by 5.3 percent to £2.88 on Monday. 

On the same day, Standard Chartered’s shares decreased by 5.8 percent to £3.38. The FinCEN files have dubbed that David Schwartz, lawyer of Labaton Sucharow, is investigating the events behind the document leak.

Two American law firms have started building class action law suits against HSBC and Standard Chartered following allegations the banking giants failed to crack down on money laundering. #FinCENFileshttps://t.co/v0aAG9Pwfm

— OpenSecretsZA (@OpenSecretsZA) September 29, 2020

According to The Mail, Julian Knight, a former executive at SCB, provided a list of SCB clients to the US investigators, which he suspected to be the fronts for the Iranian military’s nuclear program.

SCB was fined £900million last year for violating the US sanctions after it was proved that the bank was dealing with Iranian, Cuban, and Sudanese organizations.

Read more at AML Compliance in EU Member States and Risks of Businesses