The View | Why are the Hong Kong authorities still in awe of HSBC?

Lord Hain believes that HSBC needs to be investigated for “possible criminal conspiracy” over money laundering for South Africa’s Gupta family who, in turn, are alleged to have unlawfully profited from ties to President Jacob Zuma. These allegations against HSBC follow a litany of other controversies that have given the bank an extraordinarily bad name in its London home base.

However in Hong Kong, its previous base, the regulatory authorities appear to remain in awe of an organisation that abandoned the SAR (Special Administrative Region) for what at the time appeared to be greater expansion opportunities in Europe.

HSBC, self-aggrandisingly known in some quarters as The Bank, remains much in demand by the authorities, who tried to lure it back to Hong Kong following the uncertainties that have arisen over the UK’s Brexit vote. Meanwhile the bank continues to be one of the three local note issuers and remains the bank of choice for a host of official bodies.

It is not as though the allegations of wrongdoing do not involve Hong Kong. They do, in the case of the Guptas where it is alleged that part of the laundered money passed through the bank’s branches in the SAR alongside South Africa and Dubai.

Lord Hain, previously better known as Peter Hain, a former Labour Party minister and high-profile anti-apartheid campaigner, also alleges that these transactions were flagged up by the bank’s staff as being suspicious but they “were told to by the UK headquarters to ignore it”.

It should be stressed that the Guptas and President Zuma reject charges of wrongdoing and the bank is denying liability, nor have Lord Hain’s allegations been proven.

Yet HSBC has considerable form when it comes to dodgy dealings. In 2008 its Swiss private bank was hit by data-theft revelations followed by a tax-avoidance complicity scandal. In 2011 a probe was launched into money laundering at its Mexican subsidiary. This resulted in a £1.2 billion fine by the US authorities to settle allegations of laundering money for Mexican drug cartels.