HSBC is having a difficult time getting out of its own way. The bank, which, as we noted [4] in February, is second only to US real estate when it comes to the enabling of tax evasion and parking of criminal money and generally catering to shady offshore oligarchs, dictators, rock stars, monarchs, and even outright criminals, saw a list surface earlier this year which showed that its 2007-era Swiss arm helped “royal families, convicted cocaine dealers, ambassadors, terror suspects, entertainers, elected officials, corporate executives, and athletes” hide money from tax authorities.
While no one was surprised at the bank’s conduct, the report was, as Bloomberg noted at the time, a more “comprehensive list of accounts associated with more than 100,000 people and legal entities from more than 200 nations, ranging from the legitimate to the illicit.” Shortly thereafter, CEO Stuart Gulliver was sucked into the scandal after it was revealed that he was the beneficial owner [5] of an account registered to an anonymous Panamanian company where he may have sheltered nearly $8 million. Meanwhile, The Telegraph’s top political commentator quit [6], after suggesting that a £250 million loan from HSBC had made the paper hopelessly biased in its coverage of the bank.
As embarrassing (or perhaps “inconvenient” is the more appropriate term) as all of that is, and as annoying as it probably is to have your highly profitable money laundering business interfered with by party-crashing tax authorities who don’t want you doing business with Mexican drug cartels or nations which may be suffering under international sanctions, the latest HSBC faux pas may be the most amusing yet, because as The South China Morning Post reports [7], anyone attempting to access the home of HSBC’s Young Entrepreneur Awards (which ceased to exist in 2011), was recently redirected to a porn site. Here’s more:
Those accessing the page for HSBC’s defunct Young Entrepreneur Awards – originally displayed in a section of hsbc.com.hk – would be surprised or embarrassed to find a site showing images of women in provocative poses or having sex.
The awards were scrapped in 2011 and the porn site took over the address after organisers allowed its registration to expire.
A banking source said it was “a blunder” in which the hyperlink’s URL, which originally connected to a third-party webpage, was transferred to the pornography business.
[8]
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The bank did apologize in a statement and assured the public that it wasn’t affiliated with the third party site “in any way.”
So Mexican drug cartels and terrorists are welcome, but porn site operators will apparently have to take their business elsewhere.
