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
Fightland
Fightland follows a disgraced, formerly incarcerated boxing champion who returns to London to seek vengeance against the crime family he thinks betrayed him. With edge-of-seat action and populated by dangerous characters, this is a world of money and power never seen before.
On the night Duke Kilroy becomes world heavyweight champion, a vicious assault leaves his brother, Calvin, dead, causing Duke to snap and results in him spending eight years in a U.S. prison. Upon his release, and after having made a sinister discovery, Duke returns home seeking vengeance against the man he believes set him up -- the criminal kingpin and former promoter, Kingsley Marshall. But Kingsley has vanished, leaving his children and wife, Joy, who happens to be the love of Duke's life, to pick up the pieces.
Working with a cartel desperate to control London's drug market, Duke begins a high-risk game of infiltrating Kingsley's empire to destroy it from within and smoke out his enemy. But amidst a volatile criminal landscape, and competing influences threatening to pull him off course, Duke will need to channel everything that made him a champion fighter into his bloody pursuit to win the ultimate victory - revenge for his brother.
Dark Matter
Hailed as one of the best sci-fi novels of the decade, Dark Matter is a story about the road not taken. The series follows Jason Dessen, a physicist, professor, and family man who – one night while walking home on the streets of Chicago – is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Wonder quickly turns to nightmare when he tries to return to his reality amid the multiverse of lives he could have lived. In this labyrinth of mind-bending realities, he embarks on a harrowing journey to get back to his true family and save them from the most terrifying, unbeatable foe imaginable: himself.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds follows Captain Pike, Science Officer Spock and Number One in the decade before Captain Kirk boarded the U.S.S. Enterprise, as they explore new worlds around the galaxy.