Citibank And HSBC Worked With Firm At Center Of International Bribery Scandal


No business can operate without bankers — not even the bribery business.

British financial giant HSBC and American bailout kingpin Citibank processed transactions, managed money and vouched for Unaoil, a once-obscure firm that is now at the center of a massive international corruption scandal. Police raided Unaoil’s Monaco offices and interviewed its executives on Thursday, a day after The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media first exposed the company’s practices. Law enforcement agencies in at least four nations are involved in a wide-ranging probe of the company and its partners.

Halliburton, KBR and other corporate conglomerates relied on Unaoil to deliver them lucrative contracts with corrupt regimes in oil-rich nations. But without the help of banks like HSBC and Citibank, none of Unaoil’s operations would have been possible.

Both Citibank and HSBC declined to comment on whether Unaoil or the Ahsani family, who own and operate the firm, remain their clients.

“As a matter of policy, we only maintain relationships with clients who have been vetted through our strict due diligence and compliance checks,” HSBC spokeswoman Sorrel Beynon told HuffPost in a written statement.

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