Editorial: Setting the scene: The HSBC banking scandal

At the beginning of February 2015, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp—or HSBC, as it is more widely known—was exposed by an international collaboration of news outlets and investigative journalists as a bank which assists transnational organised criminals in hiding their money and helps the wealthy elite evade taxes. The bank scandal, which is now commonly termed as the “HSBC Files”, involved the leaking of secret bank files which implicated HSBC’s Swiss banking arm in dirty and criminal dealings. The leaked files attested that HSBC had been involved in assisting the wealthy elite dodge taxes through the use of aggressive marketing tactics, and furthermore that HSBC had “provided accounts to international criminals, corrupt businessmen and other high-risk individuals”