Personal opinion is that some people will take note of this incident, but for most reasonable people, this will still be far short of the threshold for taking the trouble to discontinue existing relationships as you mentioned.
Personal opinion is that some people will take note of this incident, but for most reasonable people, this will still be far short of the threshold for taking the trouble to discontinue existing relationships as you mentioned.
HSBC Mongkok/Argyle branch is closed indefinitely like Festival Walk due to protest. If protestors keep destroying property, will business start to shutdown business in HK for good? Is that the current trend?
Terrible mistake by HSBC - should have stayed neutral until sufficient narrative emerged of an actual crime,
Way to alienate a large % of your customers in one fell swoop
Not sure they had a choice here and under current laws, what their obligations and ability to push back is.
- If the police say that an account is suspected for money laundering - what level of proof or evidence or authority does HSBC need to freeze an account.
- They're saying the account was closed by the group after being unable to pass KYC/AML type interviews. If thats the case, where are the funds? How much was frozen.
Far too many questions left unanswered, even with their frantic tweets saying they're innocent and telling people they've been in HK for hundreds of years.
The law in this area is very clear.
Simplified version: under the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance a bank (or any other person for that matter) who has reasonable grounds to suspect that an account and/or an account holder may be involved in a non-trivial criminal offence, they must immediately report to the JFIU and may not process any transactions until JFIU has cleared it.
Doing anything else means that the bank and individual employees will also have committed a criminal offence and the legislation provides for some pretty hefty fines and terms of imprisonment. The bank's obligation to report and effectively freeze an account is triggered by having grounds to suspect that the account and/or account holders may have been involved in a serious crime – it's a very very very low threshold with the key words being "suspect" and "may." There is no question that having the police knock on the door asking questions and/or making allegations would trigger it. Once that happens the bank does not get the option of continuing to operate the account until some higher standard of proof is achieved – none at all. Even if the account holder was subsequently cleared of all alleged wrong doing, the bank and its employees would still have breached the legislation and be exposed to the risk of criminal charges.
The only ways to unfreeze the account are to get JFIU/the police to confirm that it is okay to do so or for one of the parties involved to obtain a court order. If the account has been frozen with funds in it, the account holder should be both trying to persuade JFIU / the police to unfreeze it and apply to court for a release order.
It wouldn't matter which bank the account was with – once the police started making allegations, the bank has percisely zero choice in the matter.
As a side note, most(?) developed countries have broadly similar legislation in place.
Apparently they've issued a cashier's check over the remaining balance, as is standard procedure for an account closure. The police has requested HSBC to not cash the check. The money is basically frozen in HSBC's account. It's unclear why Spark Alliance hasn't opened a new account at a different bank, but they probably couldn't find one that would take them, similar to Joshua Wong.
The chain of events was indisputably inescapable, as you say. What I would be curious to know more about is what exactly led them to flagging the account. I would suspend judgment till then, and certainly no radical action is justified in my view, while people should be talked away from the ledge wherever possible.
On the basis of being a financial center though, they do need to do a better job of explaining what took place, it just looks bad otherwise.