HSBC targeted in Spitzer loans inquiry

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HSBC targeted in Spitzer loans inquiry<br>By Katherine Griffiths in New York<br>22 June 2005<br><br><br>An investigation into allegations that HSBC and other major US banks charge black and Hispanic customers more than others will go ahead after a federal court in New York struck out a lawsuit to block the investigation.<br><br>The decision was a blow to the banks, which had supported a restraining order to try to prevent New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, from sifting through data which shows how mortgage lending decisions are made.<br><br>In his first foray into the consumer banking market, Mr Spitzer asked lenders in April to show how they set loan prices and fees after data showed minorities frequently paid higher interest rates and fees than white customers. Mr Spitzer is targeting HSBC's American business, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo.<br><br>Mr Spitzer claims federal mortgage data indicated that black customers are three times more likely to receive high-interest loan rates at Wells Fargo, two times more likely at JP Morgan and Citigroup, and 1.5 times more likely at HSBC.<br><br>The banks have argued that they should not have to provide information to Mr Spitzer because they are regulated at a federal rather than state level. They supported a lawsuit brought last week by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the US Treasury, which said states have no right to pry into the national banks' affairs.<br><br>HSBC's US lending arm for low-income customers, Household, has already fallen foul of regulators. It agreed to pay $484m (£265m) to settle charges that it was involved in predatory lending in 2002. HSBC took over Household several months later and agreed to clean up working practices and modernise its systems.<br><br>Bobby Mehta, the chief executive of HSBC in the US, said: "We take our fair lending and consumer protection practices very seriously. Accordingly, we have conducted and continue to conduct deep reviews of our lending data, and we are confident that we are treating our customers fairly and with integrity." <br> <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=648767">news.independent.co.uk/bu...ory=648767</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>------------------------------------------------<br>HSBC is to Spitzer what BCCI was to Morgenthau?<br><br>HSBC CEO Sir John Bond has been personally implicated in laundering stolen UK portfolio assets via KGB network to the failed Banco Ambrosiano - whose CEO 'God's Banker' Roberto Calvi was murdered under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982. Those assets were used as collateral for Vatican Bank loans that caused Ambrosiano and the IOR to go belly up.<br><br>Bond also implicated in BCCI transactions via China, Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Malaysia and Philipines that laudered drug and arms funds for Robert Maxwell's network of KGB/Mossad espionage conduits financing European terror ops during the cold war. <br><br>In the UK some very unfiinished business over Bond's personal orders in the directing of a HSBC cover-up of more stolen equity/asset portfolios linked directly to Russian organised crime.<br><br>GO Spitzer! Hope you nail the bastards.<br> <br><br> <p></p><i></i>