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This followed a record US$1.92 billion in fines for HSBC in December in 2012, to settle charges of allowing itself to laundering money and finance terrorism by US authorities.
The New York Department of Financial Services fined Standard Chartered Bank US$300 million in August 2014 after its branch in the city failed to flag high-risk transactions from clients in Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.
As a port of entry for mainland exports, Hong Kong is vulnerable to illicit funds flowing through normal trade-based channels.
The city was deemed “non-compliant” to the requirements of the Paris-based money- laundering body, Financial Action Task Force, due to the absence of a process for declaring cross border transactions – including the movement of currency and bearer negotiable instruments such as banknotes, travellers cheques and money orders. Hong Kong is due to report back to the task force, possibly next year.
Even prior to all these events, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s de facto central bank, had introduced an anti-money laundering law and launched investigations into suspicious activities in 2012, which focused on whether banks had sufficient protocols in place to report suspicious activities to the Joint Financial Intelligence Unit.
