HSBC Bank: Secret Origins To Laundering The

World's Drug Money

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/16/2015 11:28 -0400

Submitted by the Drug Trafficking & Narco-Terrorism Department of GreatGameIndia

HSBC Bank : Secret Origins To 26/11 Mumbai Attacks
#SwissLeaks what the media has termed it is a trove of secret documents from HSBCs
Swiss private banking arm that reveals names of account holders and their balances
for the year 2006-07. They come from over 200 countries, the total balance over $100
billion. But nowhere has the HSBC Swiss list touched off a more raging political debate
than in India.
Thats why to obtain and investigate the Indian names, The Indian Express partnered
in a three-month-long global project with the Washington-based International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the Paris-based Le Monde
newspaper. The investigation revealed 1,195 Indian HSBC clients, roughly double the
628 names that French authorities gave to the Government in 2011. The new
revelation published as part of a global agreement is expected to significantly
widen the scale and scope of the ongoing probe by the Special Investigation Team
(SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court.
For years, when banks have been caught laundering drug money, they have claimed
that they did not know, that they were but victims of sneaky drug dealers and a few
corrupt employees. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that a
considerable portion of the global banking system is explicitly dedicated to handling the
enormous volume of cash produced daily by dope traffickers.
Contrary to popular opinion, it is not demand from the worlds population which
creates the mind destroying drug trade. Rather, it is the world financial oligarchy,
looking for massive profits and the destruction of the minds of the population it is
determined to dominate, which organized the drug trade. The case of HSBC
underscores that point. Serving as the central bank of this global apparatus, is HSBC.

2009 CIA Map of Drug Trade Routes

East India Company Origins

The opium trade began in the early 1700s as an official monopoly of the British East
India Company, which conquered India, and ran it on behalf of the British Crown and
the financiers operating through the City of London. Indian-grown opium became a key
component in the trade for tea and silk in China. The East India Company had a
thriving business selling British textiles and other manufactured products in India, and
selling Chinese silk and tea in Britain. But the Company ran into problems with the
opium end of the trade. The influx of opium caused major problems for China, and led
the Emperor to issue an edict in 1729 prohibiting opium consumption. Then, in 1757,
the Emperor restricted all foreigners and foreign vessels to a trading area in the port
city of Canton. A stronger edict in 1799 prohibited the importation and use of opium
under penalty of death.
None of this stopped the British from continuing to flood China with opium, creating
millions of addicts, but it did cause the East India Company to protect its tea and silk
trade by shifting its Chinese opium operations to nominally independent drug runners
who bought opium legally from the East India Company in Calcutta, and smuggled it
into China. The most prominent of these drug-running firms was Jardine Matheson &
Co. It was founded in 1832 by two Scotsmen, William Jardine and James Matheson.
Jardine had been a ships surgeon with the East India Company, while Matheson was
the son of a Scottish baronet. The firm today is controlled by the Keswick family. In
1839, the Chinese Emperor launched an anti-opium offensive, which included the
confiscation of all opium stocks in the hands of Chinese and foreign merchants. The
merchants put up a fight, but were ultimately forced to concede, turning in their opium
stocks after being indemnified against losses by British officials.
In response, however, the British launched a propaganda campaign against China,
accusing it of violating Britains right to free trade. Britain sent its fleet to China, to
force the Chinese to capitulate to the opium trade. The action, known as the First
Opium War, resulted in the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, under which China not only
capitulated to the opium trade, but also agreed to pay reparations to the opium
runners and gave the British control of the island of Hong Kong. However, the treaty
did not specifically legalize opium, so the British launched a second Opium War, which
resulted in the 1856 Treaty of Tientsin, which legitimized the opium trade and opened
China up to foreigners even more.
As the opium and other trade with China expanded, Britains new territory of Hong
Kong became a major imperial commercial center. The opium dealers gathered
together to form a bank, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, as the financial flagship of
the British opium trade. Over time, the banknow known as HSBCwould extend its
reach into the drug fields of the Middle East and Ibero-America, as befitting its role as
the financial kingpin of Dope, Inc.
Role of Secret Societies
In 1783 Lord Shelbourne launched the Chinese opium trade with Scottish merchants
from the East India Company and members of the House of Windsor-allied Knights of
St. John Jerusalem.
Shelbournes chief propagandist was Adam Smith who worked for East India Company,
which emerged from the slave-trading Levant Company and later became known as

Chatham House, home to the powerful Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA).
In 1776 the high seas pirate Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations, which became the
bible of international capitalism.
In the Far East the British organized the Chinese Triad Society, also known as the
Society of Heaven and Earth, to smuggle their opium. Beginning in 1788 the
Freemason Grand Lodge of England established lodges in China, one of which was the
Triad Society. Another was known as the Order of the Swastika.
In 1839 William Jardine- a Canton-based opium trafficker- steered Britain into the first
Opium War after Chinese officials confiscated his stash. The second Opium War lasted
from 1858-1860. Lord Palmerston commanded both expeditions for the Brits. He was
also the High Priest of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the British Empire.
Throughout the 19th century the British families of Matheson, Keswick, Swire, Dent,
Inchcape, Baring and Rothschild controlled the Chinese heroin traffic. The Inchcapes
and Barings Peninsular & Orient Steam Navigation Company (PONC) transported the
dope around the world.
To the US West Coast, the families brought Chinese coolies to build JP Morgans
railroads, slave laborers who were kidnapped (shanghaied) by the Triads. The Triads
came along too, setting up opium dens in San Francisco and Vancouver and using a
network of Chinatowns as a channel for heroin. This network exists today. To the US
East Coast the families brought African slaves and cotton. These same families built
plantations and became kings of southern cotton on the backs of shanghaied Africans.
The American families Perkins, Astor and Forbes made millions off the opium trade.
The Perkins founded Bank of Boston, which is today known as Credit Suisse First
Boston. The Perkins and Morgan families endowed Harvard University. William
Hathaway Forbes was a director at Hong Kong Shanghai Bank shortly after it was
founded in 1866. John Murray Forbes was the US agent for the Barings banking family,
which financed most of the early drug trade. The Forbes family heirs later launched
Forbes magazine. Steve Forbes ran for President in 1996. John Jacob Astor invested
his opium proceeds in Manhattan real estate and worked for British intelligence. The
Astor family home in London sits opposite Chatham House.
These families launched the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation (HSBC) after the
second Opium War as a repository for their opium proceeds. HSBC, a subsidiary of the
London-based HSBC Holdings, today prints 75% of Hong Kongs currency, while the
British Cecil Rhodes-founded Standard Chartered Bank prints the rest. HSBCs Hong
Kong headquarters sits next to a massive Masonic Temple.
Freemasonry is a highly secretive society, making it an ideal vehicle for global drugs
and arms trafficking. According to 33rd Degree Mason Manly Hall, Freemasonry is a
fraternity within a fraternity an outer organization concealing an inner brotherhood
of the electthe one visible and the other invisible. The visible society is a splendid
camaraderie of free and accepted men enjoined to devote themselves to ethical,
educational, fraternal, patriotic and humanitarian concerns. The invisible society is a
secret and most august fraternity whose members are dedicated to the service of an
arcanum arcandrum (sacred secret).

Wealth derived from selling this Chinese opium during British colonial rule, helped build
many landmarks on Indias west coast. The Mahim Causeway, The Sir JJ School of Art,
David Sassoon Library and Flora Fountain, landmarks in modern Mumbai, were built by
prominent Parsi and Jewish traders from profits made by a flourishing opium and later
cotton trade with China.
Prominent families from Mumbais past, names that adorn todays famous institutions
such as the Wadias, Tatas, Jejeebhoys, Readymoneys, Camas and Sassoons sold
opium to China through the British. By the end of the nineteenth century, when the
opium trade went bust, cotton from Indias western state of Gujarat, which had already
developed strong trade links with Canton profited. The Pariss ploughed profits from the
trade with the Chinese back into India, setting up several schools, hospitals and banks.
Historical records prove that some of Indias prominent Parsi traders at the time, were
founders of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) founded in
1865. For a detailed report read Rothschild colonization of India.
It is this deadly opium empire that Gandhiji was very much conscious about and spoke
out against for which he was jailed in 1921 by Indias British rulers for undermining
the revenue. Having seen generations of Chinese youths rendered docile and passive
Gandhijis was concerned over opium and its deadly effects on India which is clear from
his letters. These opium production activities ran until 1924 in India and were stopped
with the heroic efforts of Mahatma Gandhi who first agitated to remove opium
production from India and destruction of China using Indian soil. Finally the British
transferred the entire production to Afghanistan in 1924 handing the production to
southern Afghani tribals which after 90 years became the golden crescent of opium
production. Though the production is in the hands of Afghan tribals the distribution
finance market control is still exercised by the same old British business houses or
their proxies.
Afghan Opium for Bankers and Terrorists
There is a general impression that Afghanistan has always been the center of opium
production. In fact, it has not. Prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979, opium production in
Afghanistan was less than 1,000 tons; that grew to 8,200 tons (based on conservative
UN Office on Drugs and Crime/UNODC figures) in 2008. Throughout this period,
Afghanistan was in a state of war. Following the Soviet invasion, the anti-Soviet
powers, particularly, the US, UK, and Saudi Arabia, began generating larger amounts
of drug money to finance much of the war to defeat the Soviets. Since 1989, after the
Soviet withdrawal, there has been an all-out civil war in Afghanistan, as the US-UKSaudi-created mujahideen dipped further into the opium/heroin money.
What was happening in Afghanistan during this period that caused opium production to
soar to those levels? History shows that the US invasion in 2001 came close to wiping
out the Taliban forces; the Afghan people, at least at that point in time, because of the
Pakistani-Saudi links to the Taliban and the oppressive nature of the Wahhabiindoctrinated regime, supported the invading American and NATO forces. That began
to change in 2005.
The year 2005 is important in this context, since one of the most damning parts of the
US Senate report details HSBCs relationship with the Saudi-based Al Rajhi Bank, a
member of Osama bin Ladens Golden Chain of important al-Qaeda financiers. The

HSBC-Al Rajhi relationship has spanned decades; perhaps that is why, even when
HSBCs own internal compliance offices asked that it be terminated in 2005, and even
when the US government discovered hard evidence of Al Rajhis relationship with
terrorism, HSBC continued to do business with the bank until 2010.
In fact, the report said, Al Rajhis links to terrorism were confirmed in 2002, when US
agents searched the offices of a Saudi non-profit US-designated terrorist organization,
Benevolence International Foundation. In that raid, agents uncovered a CD-ROM listing
the names of financiers in bin Ladens Golden Chain. One of those names was
Sulaiman bin Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi, a founder of Al Rajhi bank.
Recently an operation by German Customs official revealed that the British Queen
financed Osama Bin Laden. German officials in an operation raided two containers
passing through Hamburg Port and seized 14,000 documents establishing that Osama
bin Laden was funded by UK Queens bank Coutts, which is part of the Royal Bank of
Scotland.
HSBC & 26/11 Mumbai Attacks
Why did HSBC not terminate its links with the Al Rajhi in 2005? The answer lies in what
was then put in place in Afghanistan to generate large amounts of cash. When it comes
to opium/ heroin and offshore banks, Britain rules supreme. In 2005, poppy fields in
southern Afghanistan began to bloom, and it became evident to the bankers and the
geo-politicians of Britain and the US that cash to support the financial centers and the
terrorists could be made right there.
It was announced on Jan. 27, 2006 in the British Parliament that a NATO International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would be replacing the US troops in Helmand province
as part of Operation Herrick. The British 16 Air Assault Brigade would make up the core
of the force. British bases were then located in the districts of Sangin, Lashkar Gah,
and Gereshk.
As of Summer 2006, Helmand was one of the provinces involved in Operation Mountain
Thrust, a combined NATO/Afghan mission targeted at Taliban fighters in the south of
the country. In July 2006, the offensive essentially stalled in Helmand, as NATO
(primarily British) and Afghan troops were forced to take increasingly defensive
positions under heavy insurgent pressure. In response, British troop levels in the
province were increased, and new encampments were established in Sangin and
Gereshk. In Autumn 2006, some 8,000 British troops began to reach cessation of
hostilities agreements with local Taliban forces around the district centers where they
had been stationed earlier in the Summer, and it is then that drug-money laundering
began in earnest.
This drug money, at least a good part of it, is generated in this area with the help of
Dawood Ibrahim, who also played a role in helping the Mumbai attackers by giving
them the use of his existing network in Mumbai. At the time, Ibrahim worked on behalf
of the British, and ran his operation through the British-controlled emirate of Dubai.
Drugs came into Dubai through Dawoods mules, protected by the Pakistani ISI and
British MI6; the dope was shipped in containers which carried equipment sent there for
repair from Kandahar and elsewhere in southern Afghanistan. British troops
controlled Helmand province, where 53% of Afghanistans gargantuan 8,200 tons of
opium was produced in 2007.

The drugs were converted, and still are today, to cash in Dubai, where Dawood
maintains a palatial mansion, similar to the one he maintains in Karachi. Dubai is a
tax-free island-city, and a major offshore banking center. The most common reason for
opening an offshore bank account is the flexibility that comes with it.
With the development of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), which is the
latest free-trade zone to be set up there, flexible and unrestricted offshore banking has
become big business. Many of the worlds largest banks already have significant
presence in Dubai big names such as Abbey National Offshore, HSBC Offshore, ABN
Amro, ANZ Grindlays, Banque Paribas, Banque de Caire, Barclays, Dresdner, and Merrill
Lynch, all have offices in the Emirate already.
In addition to Dubai, most of the offshore banks are located in former British colonies,
and all of them are involved in money laundering. In other words, the legitimization of
cash generated from drug sales and other smuggled illegitimate goods into the
respectable banks is the modus operandi of these offshore banks. The drugs that
Dawoods mules carry are providing a necessary service for the global financial system,
as well as for the terrorists who are killing innocents all over the world.
In December of 2007, this Britain-run drug-money-laundering and terrorist-networking
operation was about to be exposed when Afghan President Hamid Karzai learned that
two British MI6 agents were working under the cover of the United Nations and the
European Union behind his back, to finance and negotiate with the Taliban. He expelled
them from Afghanistan. One of them, a Briton, Michael Semple, was the acting head of
the EU mission in Afghanistan and is widely known as a close confidant of Britains
Ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. Semple now masquerades as an academic
analyst of Afghanistan, and was associated with the Harvard Kennedy Schools Carr
Center. The second man, an Irishman, Mervin Patterson, was the third-ranking UN
official in Afghanistan at the time that he was summarily expelled.
These MI6 agents were entrusted by London with the task of using Britains 7,700
troops in the opium-infested, Pushtun-dominated, southern province of Helmand to
train 2,000 Afghan militants, ostensibly to infiltrate the enemy and seek
intelligence about the lethal arms of the real Taliban. Karzai rightly saw it as Britains
efforts to develop a lethal group within Afghanistan, a new crop of terrorists.
The drug money thus generated to fund the financial centers and terrorists through
HSBC was also responsible for ongoing terrorist attacks that have destabilized most of
South Asia. The most important of these was the massive attack on Mumbai.
The mode used to launder such drug money is through diamonds. A 2003 Report
assessed various alternative financing mechanisms that could be used to facilitate
money laundering and or terrorist financing. Trading in commodities, remittance
systems, and currency were assessed on each of their abilities to earn, be moved, and
store value. Diamonds were the only alternative financial device that fit into all of these
assessment criteria.
Diamonds can be vulnerable for misuse for money laundering and terrorist financing
purposes because they can transfer value and ownership quickly, often, with a minimal
audit trail. They provide flexibility and an easy transportation of value.

Top diamond traders of the country, several of whom are now settled abroad, figure on
what the media calls as the #SwissList, with mostly Mumbai addresses given. Many
persons on the list are Gujarati diamond merchants with offices all over world having
roots in Palanpur.
However their involvement in not just limited to money laundering. Almost 6 months
before 26/11 2008 Mumbai Attacks the Financial Intelligence Unit of India (FIU-IND)
(the central national agency responsible for receiving, processing, analyzing and
disseminating information relating to suspect financial transactions) was already
tracking the diamond industry for suspicious activities by terrorists.
A year ago, some people from Mumbai began purchasing diamonds worth crores of
rupees. When the industry tried to trace the traders, they turned out to be nonexistent, said Vanani.
The FIU traced all foreign transactions of Surats diamond industry, especially those
emanating from Belgium. It found that a great deal of money was being invested by
terrorist groups.
However in May 2014 eight of these Belgium based diamond dealers were given a
clean chit by the Income Tax department in the black money case. The I-T department
said a probe was initiated against the eight individuals, but there was no proof of tax
evasion by them. Why is the Government reluctant in disclosing Black Money related
data; be it NDA and even UPA before it ? For a detailed report on the issue read 26/11
The Black Money Trail.
From the Far East to the Middle East to Ibero-America to India, everywhere the drug
trade is flourishing, you will find HSBC. It may not handle the dope, but it does handle
the money, making sure that the citizens above suspicion who run the empire get
their cut of the proceeds. Now HSBC has been caught red-handed laundering money
in the U.S., India, China, Argentina almost everywhere the sun shined through the
colonies. This is a bank which has abused us, assaulted our people, and violated the
law with abandon. Isnt it time we set an example and revoke its charter to do
business here in India ?