Guillermo Babatz, head of Mexico’s banking and securities commission (CNBV), said that from 2002 the watchdog had become aware of “weaknesses” in HSBC’s anti-laundering controls.
In the following years the CNBV held repeated meetings with HSBC executives from both its Mexican and its international operations, insisting on the “absolute necessity to improve the bank’s anti-laundering controls,” Babatz said.
“Due to these meetings with these high-ranking officials, above all those in 2008, the bank finally reacted and took very strong measures. The first measure it took was to limit or stop taking dollars from the public,” he told Mexican radio.
When asked whether the bank had committed a crime he repeatedly said the fault lay in “administrative errors”.
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