HSBC rumbled – jail time beckons

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For years HSBC and their solicitors Weightmans and Restons have been denying and lying about having done anything illegal by applying illegal collection charges to debts owed to the bank, via HFC Bank and John Lewis Financial Services. However, in January of this year the FCA announced (having previously covered up the fraud)  that HSBC had “voluntarily” agreed to repay £4,000,000 of those illegal charges. The true figure should be £80-100m.

Here is the bank’s Chair, Douglas Flint once again denying and lying about the extent of the fraud, and trying to mock me in the process (I have always said that the total detriment is over £1bn, which it is, since HFC Bank, which HSBC purchased in 2003, was established in the UK in the 1970s):

In tandem with the FCA I have also been making regular reports to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). They told me before Christmas that both firms of solicitors involved, Weightmans and Restons, credited all the illegal charges on accounts in 2010. I did not believe them, but now I do, because it has been shown to me that although they did that, HSBC did not pass those credits on to their customers. Here is what I received in April 2017 from the SRA in response to a complaint:

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Following the HSBC agreement to repay £4m I received an email from a confused customer who didn’t know what the redress was for. He therefore contacted Restons solicitors, who confirmed to him that he had paid his account off in full (including the illegal charge) and that they had credited the charge back to him in 2010. He never received the money from HSBC, although he is now about to, as one of the 6,700 customers the FCA say is due redress.

My evidence indicates there are about 500,000 customers affected. Below is his email to me, received today. The implication of this is that HSBC have been sitting on £80-100m of money that should have been repaid to customers in 2010. Surely, now, it’s time for some HSBC bankers to go to jail.

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