The HSBC has decided to recruit a panel of experts to beef up its defences against financial crime, just two months after they were fined almost two billion dollars by US authorities over Mexican money laundering and Iranian sanctions breaches.
HSBC announced the creation of a new Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee with five independent advisers on Wednesday.
The new security panel includes Bill Hughes, a former head of the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, Dave Hartnett, former head of HM Revenue & Customs and
James Comey, a former US deputy attorney-general, who will also join the bank in March both as a member and an independent non-executive director.
Rona Fairhead, the outgoing chief executive of the Financial Times Group and an existing HSBC non-executive board member, will head the new committee.
December saw HSBC agree to pay a $1.256bn fine to the Department of Justice plus a further $665m to US regulators to settle money laundering and sanctions breaches following a five-year thorough investigation. They also signed a five-year deferred prosecution agreement to prevent a trial over the affair.
