Shell's "Green" Ads Mislead

Oil and gas giant Shell have had some of their adverts in the UK banned for misleading claims about how clean their overall energy production is.The ban applies to one TV advert, a poster displayed in Bristol and a YouTube ad, all shown in 2022. 

 

The Advertising Standards Authority ruled they all left out information on Shell's more polluting work with fossil fuels. The selection of ads were likely to mislead consumers as they "misrepresented the contribution that lower-carbon initiatives played, or would play in the near future" compared with the rest of the company's operations. 

 

Shell however "strongly" disagreed with the ASA's findings. 

 

Whatever. The adverts cannot be shown in their current form again, the ASA decreed. 

 

One of the banned advertisements was a poster shown in Bristol, with the text "Bristol is ready for cleaner energy". It included text quoting the number of homes in the South West of England which used renewable electricity. 

 

The ASA maintained the poster was fallacious because it gave the impression that Shell as a whole were providing cleaner energy. 

 

A spokesperson for Shell said the ASA's decision "could slow the UK's drive towards renewable energy". 

 

"No energy transition can be successful if people are not aware of the alternatives available to them. That is what our adverts set out to show, and that is why we're concerned by this short-sighted decision", the spokesperson added. 

 

The ruling comes as ASA are combating companies overstating their environmental friendliness, known as "corporate greenwashing". They included “green” ads in the UK by Spanish oil company Repsol and Malaysia’s Petronas for not providing full information on their activities and carbon reduction strategies. 

 

And not just energy companies. Last year, ASA prohibited a Tesco plant-based burger ad, a Persil advert, and two HSBC adverts over their claims of environmental benefits, which the agency deemed "misleading".

Bud Light Sales Plummet Everywhere in the US

Sorry, Bud Light sales are not looking good at all! 

 

In fact, America's flagship beer brand has seen its sales plummet in every US region after it used Dylan Mulvaney (right), the controversial trans influencer to promote the beverage. 

 

New data from Beer Business Daily showed:

 

It comes as analysts at HSBC have downgraded Anheuser-Busch InBev's stock to a hold status because they are in the midst of a worsening crisis over the marketing blunder. It means that investors should not buy or sell shares of the company. 

 

And Carlos Laboy, a managing director at HSBC's global beverage sector, said that the backlash is a sign there are “deeper problems than ABI admit”, questioning if they were “hiring the best people to grow the brands and gauge risk”.

Banks Finance Oil & Gas Firms

Banks are snubbing the climate pledges they made. 

In April, they indicated they understood that they have an important role in the transition away from fossil fuels, and many signed up to the United Nations-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which requires they set targets to reduce carbon emissions.

However, activist group ShareAction said on Monday that their analysis showed that twenty-five of the said banks have provided $33 billion (£24 billion) in loans and other financing to 50 companies with large oil and gas expansion plans. The oil & gas companies include America’s ExxonMobil, which have tried to defy shareholder demands to cut emissions, state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco and London-listed Shell and BP who have made huge profits from energy price increases in recent months. 

More than half ($19 billion) of the financing since the net zero agreement came from four of alliance’s founders. They were London-headquartered HSBC and Barclays, France’s BNP Paribas and Germany’s Deutsche Bank. 

HSBC, Barclays and BNP Paribas also provided the most finance to these companies since 2016, at $59 billion, $48 billion and $46 billion respectively. 

The banks’ broken promises mean they are giving all of us the one-finger salute.

Malaysian Banks Identified in FinCEN Files

Malaysia is not unaffected by the FinCEN files scandal. 

In case, you didn’t read my post this morning, the global financial industry has been put under the spotlight again after a cache of leaked documents show years of transactions handled by the world’s largest banks linked to money laundering, corruption and fraud. 

According to a Malay Mail report published yesterday, a total of 23 transactions involving Malaysian banks were flagged as “suspicious” – with over $4.88 million (RM20 million) going in and $13.38 million (RM55 million) going out. 

On the receipt side, AmBank led the list of dubious dealings, having accepted $2.9 million in two transactions, followed by HSBC Bank Malaysia Bhd ($871,637) and Alliance Bank Malaysia Bhd ($462,378). And the bulk of suspicious transactions, a total of $13.37 million in seven transactions, was sent by Public Bank Bhd. 

Other banks also allegedly involved included CIMB Bank Bhd, Standard Chartered Bank, United Overseas Bank and OCBC Bank. 

These undertakings all involved overseas accounts in countries such as Afghanistan, Latvia, Poland, United Arab Emirates and the United States. 

A timely meet-up with a friend and ex-colleague, Dr Sheila Cheng at the Asia e University campus in Jalan SS 15/4, Subang Jaya, Selangor today. 

We must have had an intense discussion so much so that it slipped my mind to take a photo with her. It’s been years since we last met.

The FinCEN Files Scandal

Rogue banks are in the spotlight again. 

Leaked documents from the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) – the people at the US Treasury who combat financial crime – involving about $2 trillion of suspicious transactions have revealed how some of the world's biggest banks have allowed criminals to move dirty money around the world.

These banks such as JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of New York Mellon and more, not only turned a blind eye but they have immensely profited from the dirty money transactions. 

It’s alleged that BNY Mellon, for example, moved more than $1 billion for the financier behind Malaysia’s 1MDB political scandal, and JPMorgan processed more than $50 million for Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for US President Donald Trump.  

The FinCEN files are more than 2,500 documents, most of which were files that banks sent to the US authorities between 2000 and 2017. They raise concerns about what their clients might be doing. 

These documents are some of the international banking system's most closely guarded secrets. Banks use them to report suspicious behaviour but they are not proof of wrongdoing or crime. 

They were leaked to Buzzfeed News and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which distributed them to 108 news organizations in 88 countries – and disclosing activities that banks don't want the public to know about. 

A BBC News report had given us insights into some of these activities: 

HSBC allowed fraudsters to move $80 million of stolen money around the world, even after it learned from US investigators the scheme was a Ponzi scam. 

JP Morgan allowed a company to move more than $1bn through a London account without knowing who owned it. The bank later discovered the company might be owned by a mobster on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. 

Evidence that one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest associates used Barclays bank in London to avoid sanctions which were meant to stop him using financial services in the West. Some of the cash was used to buy works of art. 

The husband of a woman who has donated £1.7m to the UK's governing Conservative Party's was secretly funded by a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Putin. 

The UK is called a "higher risk jurisdiction" and compared to Cyprus, by the intelligence division of FinCEN. That's because of the number of UK registered companies that appear in the SARs. Over 3,000 UK companies are named in the FinCEN files - more than any other country. 

Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich once held secret investments in footballers not owned by his club through an offshore company. 

Deutsche Bank moved money launderers' dirty money for organised crime, terrorists and drug traffickers. 

Standard Chartered moved cash for Arab Bank for more than a decade after clients' accounts at the Jordanian bank had been used in funding terrorism. 

The above illustrates all too clearly that existing regulations and bank compliance processes are grossly inadequate. 

And according to the ICIJ, in the US, almost 200 banking entities filed suspicious transactions.

Part of the list of 200 US banking entities. Data from ICIJ

By law, these banks have to know who their clients are – it's not enough to file SARs and keep taking dirty money from clients while expecting enforcers to deal with the problem. If they have evidence of criminal activity, they should stop moving the cash.

Scandalous – that’s what it is!

HSBC's Misdeeds Don't Seem to End

HSBC are one banking institution that practises deceit. They are sharks, after all.

 

Yet, they have the audacity to talk about their values. 

“At HSBC we put great emphasis on our values. We want to ensure that our employees feel empowered to do the right thing and to act with courageous integrity. By doing so we will meet the expectations of society, customers, regulators and investors” (Webpage http://www.hsbc.com/citizenship/our-values, accessed March 23, 2015). That is just pretentious hooey!

 

Banking giant HSBC helped wealthy clients – many of them are prominent figures in business, film, music, sport, and even the heads of royal families – across the world evade hundreds of millions of pounds worth of tax.

 

BBC probed 106,000 clients with Swiss bank accounts which had assets worth $118 billion spread out in 203 countries – thanks to whistleblower Herve Falciani who had collected thousands of pages of data between 2006 and 2007. The voluminous information was obtained by French newspaper Le Monde and these have now been passed to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Guardian newspaper, BBC's Panorama and more than 50 media outlets around the world.

 

Offshore accounts are not illegal, but many people use them to hide cash from the tax authorities. And while tax avoidance is perfectly legal, deliberately hiding money to evade tax is not. Already, the French authorities concluded in 2013 that 99.8% of their citizens on the list were probably evading tax.

 

HSBC did not just turn a blind eye to tax evaders – in some cases they broke the law by actively helping their clients.

 

In one case, an HSBC  memo showed how the bank was apparently prepared to aid Emmanuel Shallop – later convicted of dealing in illegal "blood diamonds". One leaked memo said: "We have opened a company account for him based in Dubai".

 

And the bank gave one wealthy family a foreign credit card so they could withdraw their undeclared cash at cashpoints overseas.

 

HSBC also helped its tax-dodging clients stay ahead of the law.

 

When the European Savings Directive was introduced in 2005, the idea was that Swiss banks would take any tax owed from undeclared accounts and pass it to the taxman. It was a tax designed to catch tax evaders. But instead of simply collecting the money, HSBC wrote to customers and offered them ways to get round the new tax.

 

Richard Brooks, a former tax inspector and author of The Great Tax Robbery, said: "I think they were a tax avoidance and tax evasion service. I think that's what they were offering. They knew full well that people come to them to dodge their tax liabilities."

 

Of course, in the face of copious evidence, HSBC have to confess that they are "accountable for past control failures." But they said they have now "fundamentally changed". Or so we are led to believe.

 

HSBC also said they have completely overhauled their private banking business and have reduced the number of Swiss accounts by almost 70% since 2007. They claim they are putting compliance and tax transparency ahead of profitability – and that made my toes chortle with abandoned glee.

 

We are more than familiar with HSBC’s misdeeds. Will they ever clean up their act?

Note: BBC's current affairs program, Panorama put HSBC under the spotlight with their documentary "The Bank of Tax Cheats" on BBC One on February 09, 2015.

 

On Thursday, I reached my first Toastmasters milestone for this calendar year. I had attended 50 regular meetings and delivered 22 project speeches (19 CC speeches and 3 Advanced speeches).

A decent start and I am glad to note that I am conscientious about doing my speeches. I really have to work hard to be a good speaker – I know there are no shortcuts.

 

HSBC Can't Stand the Heat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image credit: http://www.theborneopost.com/2013/11/24/hsbc-employees-hold-peaceful-protest/

 

In November of last year, global banking conglomerate HSBC and one of Sarawak’s oldest banks resolved to close down their commercial banking business in the state. The bank gave an unconvincing explanation for the shutdown – there was not enough business to carry on in Sarawak!

 

This is in spite of all the billions of investment in the Sarawak Corridor for Renewable Energy (SCORE) pumped in by Taib Mahmud’s lavish public borrowing – when he was still the Chief Minister.

 

A public outcry ensued and there were howls of protests by bank employees and the Sarawak Bank Employees Union. Still, these displays of unhappiness did not amount to anything. 

Did they think the bank care about the livelihoods of these locals? FYI, the payouts were pitiful. According to the Borneo Post, it was only 1.4 times the monthly salary, irrespective of the number of years the staff worked for the bank. 

[The first batch of employees will leave by end-April 2014 and the second and final batch by end of September 2014].

 

In fact, online investigative portal Sarawak Report had disclosed on April 25, 2014 of HSBC’s decision not to do business with Taib and his clan.

 

The truth of the matter is that HSBC have been facing severe and uncomfortable exposure over their embarrassing associations with the dirty potentates of East Malaysia and needed to take action.

 

A Global Witness report released last year already revealed how HSBC bankrolled many crony deals by Taib, which have destroyed the environment and violated native rights.

 

[Sarawak Report too exposed HSBC’s connections to the money laundering of illegal millions by Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman].

 

Given the above, it seems that the bank are seeking to do ‘damage control’ and clean up their business in this part of the world. Hence, the contentious decisions.

 

But don’t be fooled by HSBC. They can’t stand the heat, so they got out of the kitchen. This is just a temporary lull. After all, they are well-known as a tainted entity, corrupted by corporate avarice.

 

A bevy of happy Sunway University students and their lecturer! This was a selfie my DMK1013 Tute 4 class took on Monday:

 

 

HSBC Hogs the Limelight Again

The revelation that HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA)’s Swiss private bank was an “open door” for money laundering and terrorist finance should not come as a surprise. On Monday, Hervé Falciani, a computer services specialist with HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) N.A., who supervised data migration on individual accounts said that managers wilfully failed to exercise controls – so what is new with HSBC? It seems that he was increasingly troubled by the bank’s dubious practices and for two years beginning in 2006, Falciani mirrored account information onto his laptop. HSBC, Europe’s largest bank by market value became aware only in 2008 that Falciani had stolen details on 24,000 accounts and secured an international arrest warrant issued by Swiss authorities. Falciani, a dual French-Italian citizen whom neither country would extradite, was picked up in Nice and when French prosecutors, acting on behalf of Swiss police, searched his home and seized his laptop, they discovered files on 130,000 alleged tax evaders.

Rather than arresting Falciani, they opened an investigation into the alleged tax evaders. When French authorities let it slip to the media that had files on some 3,000 Swiss HSBC account holders and that they would prosecute, they recuperated some €1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) in unpaid taxes from profligate citizens.

In the interim, a diplomatic row ensued; Switzerland accused France of using stolen data and the French countered, threatening to have Switzerland added to the OECD Tax Haven Black List. Over Swiss objections, then Finance Minister Christine Lagarde shared the data with tax officials in cooperating countries.

Arrested in Barcelona on July 01, Swiss authorities demanded Falciani’s extradition to Switzerland where he faces charges of data theft and violation of bank secrecy laws. If convicted, Falciani faces a three-year prison term and a fine that could top €200,000 ($253,000).

It has been reported that the Spanish public prosecutor will oppose the Swiss extradition request because Falciani’s actions do not constitute a crime in Spain, said prosecutor Dolores Delgado.

[Moves against Falciani by the Swiss government are reminiscent of the US Justice Department’s 2008 prosecution of UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld. A former UBS banker in Switzerland, Birkenfeld blew the lid off a massive scheme by the bank to illegally hide 19,000 US client accounts squirreled away in dodgy offshore tax havens for purposes of money laundering and tax fraud. The IRS had calculated that the total cost in lost revenue stolen from the American people by wealthy elites may be in excess of $100 billion annually].

What Falciani did was commendable because as he himself put it, it was his “civic duty.” Already, the villainous bank has earned notoriety for its past transgressions – read my last post on HSBC dated December 26, 2012 at this link http://helpvictor.blogspot.com/2012/12/hsbc-rogue-bank.html.

HSBC is unrepentant and even more so, recalcitrant! When news of the Falciani leak went public, Alexandre Zeller, the chief executive of HSBC’s Swiss subsidiary said at the time, “We deeply regret this situation and unreservedly apologize to our clients for this threat to their privacy.”  But press reports failed to mention whether HSBC apologized to European taxpayers for the role they played in continent-wide tax fraud.

The international exposure on this rogue bank will hopefully make its own customers aware of how much HSBC values integrity. Maybe it should go for a re-positioning exercise to take advantage of its odious infamy. Instead of “The world’s local bank” tagline, it should perhaps shout out its famous services, i.e. money laundering, tax fraud, et cetera. HSBC has found its own niche in this lucrative business!

HSBC, the rogue bank

On Christmas Day, Himpunan Hijau activists held a demonstration in Kuantan against a major international bank over its involvement with Australia's Lynas Corporation. Their target was the HSBC branch at Jalan Mahkota. Protestors claim that the bank was financing Lynas and was thus contributing to environmental degredation.

About 50 protestors took part in the event, dubbed the Black Christmas gathering complete with a black Christmas tree. They gathered at about 2.30 PM for the 25-minute protest in the rain. Protestors carried placards venting their anger towards Lynas and HSBC, with one reading "Our Christmas has been darkened".

After they were done, the black Christmas tree was left at the bank's doorsteps.

Police personnel were at the scene, but did not take any action.

Himpunan Hijau chairperson Wong Tack said banks must not have a neutral stand on environmental issues and must show a sense of corporate social responsibility. More so, HSBC because it has been in the news for a lot of wrong reasons!

US prosecutors announced on December 11, 2012 a record $1.92 billion (RM5.87 billion) settlement with HSBC.

A 335-page report compiled for the committee detailed how HSBC’s subsidiaries transported billions of dollars of cash in armored vehicles, cleared suspicious travelers’ cheques worth billions, and allowed Mexican drug lords to fly whole planes loaded with money laundered through Cayman Islands accounts. The bank even managed to label Mexico, ravaged by corruption and drug wars, as “low risk”.

So rampant was the practice, prosecutors said, that on some days drug traffickers deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars at HSBC Mexico accounts. To speed things along, the criminals even designed “specially shaped boxes” that fit the size of teller windows at HSBC branches, according to the documents.

As far back as February 2008, Mexican authorities had told the CEO of HSBC Holdings Plc’s Mexico unit that a local drug lord referred to the bank as the “place to launder money”! Prosecutors said a multi-year, multi-agency probe into such transactions revealed how HSBC had degenerated into the “preferred financial institution” for drug traffickers and money launderers.

David Bagley, the head of compliance at HSBC, resigned from his position on July 17 in front of a US Senate subcommittee after being accused of operating a money-laundering conduit for “drug kingpins and rogue nations” as well as terrorist financing. And according to the Senate committee, HSBC accepted more than $15 billion in bulk cash transactions from subsidiaries in Mexico, Russia, and other countries at high risk of money laundering between mid-2006 and mid-2009, but failed to conduct proper checks. Other subsidiaries moved money from Iran, Syria, and other countries on US sanction lists, and even helped a Saudi bank linked to Al-Qaeda shift money to the United States.

UK’s The Telegraph has already disclosed that Britain’s biggest bank is at the center of a major HM Revenue and Customs investigation after it opened offshore accounts in Jersey for serious criminals living in this country. [Jersey is a British dependency but has a separate tax system and is considered a “tax haven”].

The tax authorities have obtained details of every British client of HSBC in Jersey after a whistleblower secretly provided a detailed list of names, addresses and account balances in the week beginning November 12, 2012. The Telegraph understands that among those identified on the list are Daniel Bayes, a drug dealer who is now in Venezuela; Michael Lee, who was convicted of possessing more than 300 weapons at his house in Devon; three bankers facing major fraud allegations and a man once dubbed London’s “number two computer crook”. A series of other accounts containing six-figure deposits are also registered to modest addresses in relatively poor parts of the country. The total value of the accounts under investigation is said to be about $1.1 billion.

The bank is legally obliged to report to the authorities any suspicions about the source of money deposited in its accounts. HM Revenue and Customs is understood to be trawling through a list that has identified 4,388 people based in Britain who had bank accounts at HSBC in Jerseyholding £699 million in offshore current accounts in addition to having billions of pounds more in investment schemes. This work is expected to lead to the identification of hundreds of people who are evading tax as the accounts have not been previously disclosed.

The whistleblower who has obtained the information also has further lists of offshore HSBC clients with addresses outside Britain, including 602 in Israel, 527 in France, 333 in Spain and 117 in the US. In total, the leaked HSBC Jersey client list is thought to contain the names and addresses of 8,474 people, including more than half that are based in the UK.

The use of tax havens by British residents and citizens to minimise tax is legal but subject to a range of complex rules and regulations. British taxpayers have a duty to report to HMRC details of money held offshore that is liable to tax.

Around the world, HSBC has faced repeated accusations that it was not maintaining sufficient controls over the source of money deposited in its accounts. Money laundering rules demand that banks monitor the source of money and report any suspicions to the relevant authorities. Most banks take an active approach to this duty but HSBC is showing itself to be a rogue bank. Shame on you, HSBC!