20 September 2020

Global banks faced a fresh scandal about dirty money on Monday as they sought to limit the fallout from a cache of leaked documents showing they transferred more than $2 trillion in suspect funds over nearly two decades.

Britain-based HSBC Holdings Plc HSBA.L, Standard Chartered Plc STAN.L and Barclays Plc BARC.L, Germany's Deutsche Bank AG DBKGn.DE and Commerzbank AG CBKG.DE, and U.S.-headquartered JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N and Bank of New York Mellon Corp BK.N were among the lenders named in the report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and based on leaked documents obtained by BuzzFeed News...

Investors worried about the potential fallout for global banks, many of which have faced hefty fines in the past for lapses in controls and spent billions of dollars to bolster compliance...

Deutsche Bank said the issues raised in the media reports were “historic,” while the German Finance Ministry said on Monday that the cases linked to Germany in the reports had already been dealt with.

HSBC also said the information in the reports was historic, while Standard Chartered pointed to recent investments to improve its control procedures.

BNY Mellon said it fully complied with all “all applicable laws and regulations.” JPMorgan said it has “thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars dedicated to this important work.” ...

The UK government said it was working on reforms to its corporate registry system that will require more checks on company directors.

[refers to HSBC, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon; includes responses from Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Standard Chartered, BNY Mellon]