HSBC accused of 'possible criminal complicity' in the Gupta money scandal
Image: MARTIN RHODES/BUSINESS DAY
The UK bank accused of possible criminal complicity relating to allegations of money laundering by the Gupta family has been named as HSBC.
However, as HSBC did not have the relevant foreign exchange licences, Nedbank and Standard Bank in South Africa were allegedly used as intermediaries.
This was revealed in a letter dated October 31 2017 – and seen by TimesLIVE – from House of Lords peer Peter Hain to Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond.
Hain sent Hammond printouts of HSBC transactions involving the controversial family.
The information detailed money transfers made by the Guptas over the past few years from their South African bank accounts held with HSBC to accounts held by the same bank in Dubai and Hong Kong, he said in the letter.
Hain said some of the transactions were legitimate, but not all of them.
He told Hammond he had been informed that HSBC flagged some suspicious transactions internally but that its headquarters in the UK gave instructions to ignore this.
"That is a major breach of FCA [Financial Conduct Authority] practice, which I am sure you would never countenance, and is an incitement to money laundering, which has self-evidently occurred in this case and also been sanctioned by HSBC as part of [the] flagrant robbery of South African taxpayers of many millions," Hain wrote.