Banksters
This episode of Four Corners is a French TV report, "Banksters" by Jerome Fritel & Marc Roche, on the scandalous conduct of HSBC.
"You have to ask: if you don't prosecute these people, who the hell are you going to prosecute?" Former US Senate investigator
HSBC is one of the world's largest and most powerful financial institutions with offices on five continents, including in Australia. It likes to spruik its financial might and global reach. Behind the corporate gloss, it has a far less attractive reputation. The bank has been at the centre of several of the biggest financial scandals uncovered this century.
"Affiliates of drug cartels were literally walking into bank branches with hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of US cash…that didn't happen once, it didn't happen twice, it happened systematically over the course of about a decade." Former US Deputy Federal Prosecutor
HSBC, or the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation has been implicated in a raft of illegal activities, from money laundering for the mafia, to enabling tax evasion and currency manipulation.
"No matter where you live, no matter what kind of business you are in, if you wish to enter the offshore system, HSBC is likely to be your bank." Investigative journalist
In this global investigation, the role of HSBC in these scandals is laid bare.
"There is simultaneously drug money, money from terrorism, money from Belgian diamond dealers, money of the French dental surgeons, money of the elite and the world of showbiz, of French and European aristocracy... it was a national sport, hiding money in Switzerland and at HSBC." Reporter
Despite the revelations, the bank has flourished, leaving investigators frustrated.
"How many billions of dollars do you have to launder for drug lords before somebody says, ‘We're shutting you down'?" US Senator
The film raises disturbing questions about who is in charge of regulating the banks in an increasingly globalised financial world.
"Who has jurisdiction over an institution that operates in a hundred countries? Who has the responsibility for taking on that kind of criminal undertaking?" Former US Senate investigator
Regulators stand accused of failing to adequately punish the bank and impose penalties that hold HSBC to account.
"Are we capable of regulating the banks properly? Of course we are. Do we want to, is really the probably important question." UK MP
With the rise of China, HSBC is positioning itself as the bank of choice to drive China's global economic ambitions, which makes investigators uneasy.
"As you have firms of the stature and the size of HSBC marrying up with rising Chinese banks that are now so huge, it's a recipe for potential disaster." Former undercover agent, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Trailer
Recently Updated Shows
Return to Paradise
Set in the idyllic, beachside hamlet of Dolphin Cove, Return to Paradise is six gripping, twisting and fiendishly clever murder mysteries – all against the spectacular backdrop of the Australian coastal landscape.
Australian ex-pat Mackenzie Clarke is the seemingly golden girl of the London Metropolitan police force – with an intuitive approach to detective work, she has built a reputation for being able to crack the most impossible of cases. However, she's suddenly forced to up sticks and move back to her childhood home of Dolphin Cove, a beautiful, coastal paradise… and Mackenzie's worst nightmare.
English Teacher
English Teacher follows Evan Marquez, a high school teacher in Austin, Texas, who often finds himself at the intersection of the personal, professional and political aspects of working at a high school. Evan wants to be a principled person but often runs into trouble because of it.
The Gilded Age
The American Gilded Age was a period of immense economic change, of huge fortunes made and lost, and the rise of disparity between old money and new.
Against this backdrop of change, the story begins in 1882 — introducing young Marian Brook, the orphaned daughter of a Union general, who moves into the New York City home of her thoroughly old money aunts Agnes van Rhijn and Ada Brook. Accompanied by Peggy Scott, an accomplished African-American woman, Marian inadvertently becomes enmeshed in a social war between one of her aunts, a scion of the old money set, and her stupendously rich neighbors, a ruthless railroad tycoon and his ambitious wife, George and Bertha Russell.
In this exciting new world that is on the brink of the modern age, will Marian follow the established rules of society, or forge her own path?
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
On Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, John Oliver presents a satirical look at the week in news, politics and current events.