The warning from Manfred Galdes that the ineffective enforcement of laws in the financial sector is damaging us with the rest of the world was echoed at around the same time by the CEO of HSBC Bank Malta.
Andrew Beane spoke first to shareholders and later explained in some more detail to Keith Micallef what was worrying him. As anyone trying to deposit 10 euro which does not fit into a pattern of a monthly payslip can attest, HSBC is fastidious on verifying the provenance of funds to a point that may feel ridiculous.
HSBC has been slapped heavily before for allowing its services to be used by money-launderers. It’s been fined heavily by the US and the EU and it exists in a perpetual state of probation, worrying that the moment it lowers its guard it might unwittingly accept business that could cause it to lose everything.
HSBC famously turns down all gaming business in Malta in spite of the fact that it’s clearly a lucrative market. It deems the risk of contamination from laundered money pumped through its systems completely unacceptable. And that is but one example.
Andrew Beane warns that HSBC can only protect its own reputation, such as it is. If the rest of the industry, or even a fraction of that industry, is willing to make compromises that damage Malta’s reputation, they will not be able to make up for it.
He obviously did not make specific examples. But I’m not a bank so I can. HSBC might filter out every shady speck of dubious money but if the muck it refuses is taken up by some lowest common denominator like Pilatus Bank, the country’s reputation will be judged according to that least common denominator.
Everyone will suffer from such damage. Including the most careful. Including HSBC.
Unless, as Manfred Galdes and Andrew Beane warn we should, we get our act together double quick. To do that we cannot face the world with the sort of bumbling inconsistencies from our law enforcement agencies like Ian Abdilla did this morning facing the microphone of Times of Malta.
That sort of fudging is just what the rest of the world cannot see if we are to survive as a credible business destination. No one – except pirates — wants to do business in a pirate bay. Especially a pirate bay defended by Captain Hook’s Bill Jukes, Turk, Starkey and Mullins, dressed as officers of the Maltese corps.