HSBC Suisse investigated by Swiss and French courts

HSBC Suisse under investigation by the Swiss and French courts Keystone-SDA

HSBC Private Bank (Switzerland) is in the sights of the Swiss and French judicial authorities on money laundering charges.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

According to the British banking group, the authorities in both countries are conducting criminal investigations against it.

The probes relate to two “historic” banking relationships, according to HSBC’s half-yearly report. The investigations against the Swiss subsidiary are currently at an early stage.

In June 2024, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) ordered measures against HSBC Private Bank (Switzerland) for violating money laundering rules. It prohibited the bank from establishing new business relationships with politically exposed persons until further notice, and asked it to verify its current business relationships.

Funds from Lebanon

At the time, Finma referred to two business relationships with politically exposed persons from Lebanon. In these cases, the bank had not sufficiently verified the origin and purpose of the assets. According to the financial watchdog, these involved funds totalling CHF300 million from a Lebanese public institution.

The assets originated from the Lebanese Central Bank. Its former director, Riad Salameh, is accused of embezzling more than $300 million, with the support of his brother Raja Salameh.

In 2020, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland opened an investigation against Salameh and his brother on suspicion of aggravated money laundering.

Translated from French by DeepL/mga

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]