The UK bank accused of possible criminal complicity relating to allegations of money laundering by the Gupta family is HSBC. However, HSBC did not have the relevant foreign exchange licenses so Nedbank and Standard Bank in SA were used as intermediate banks. This was revealed in a letter dated October 31, and seen by Business Day, from House of Lords peer Peter Hain to Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond. Hain sent Hammond printouts of HSBC transactions involving the controversial family. The information details money transfers made by the Guptas over the past few years from their South African bank accounts held with HSBC to accounts held by the same bank in Dubai and Hong Kong, he said in the letter. Hain said some of the transactions were legitimate, but not all of them. He told Hammond that he had been informed that HSBC flagged some suspicious transactions internally but that its headquarters in the UK gave instructions to ignore this. “That is a major breach of FCA prac...
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