HSBC chief quits over laundering scandal

HSBC Holdings’s head of group compliance, David Bagley, told a Senate hearing he will step down amid charges the bank gave terrorists, drug cartels and criminals access to the US financial system by failing to guard against money laundering.

Bagley was among at least six HSBC executives who testified before the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations after the panel released a 335-page report describing a decade of compliance failures by Europe’s biggest bank.

London- based HSBC enabled drug lords to launder money in Mexico, did business with firms linked to terrorism and concealed transactions that bypassed US sanctions against Iran, Senate investigators said in the report.

Source: Bloomberg