Who busted the bankers of HSBC?

Over the last week, the international press has awakened to a banking scandal of BCCI magnitude.

It involves a major global bank called HSBC that includes money-laundering operations for the drug cartels, terrorists and rogue nations among its services.

Last week the top compliance executive for the global banking giant announced during a Senate hearing into the institution's failure to stop illegal foreign transactions, that he will step down from that role.David Bagley, the head of compliance for the British bank since 2002, broke from his prepared testimony to tell the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that "now is the appropriate time for me and for the bank for someone new to serve as the head of group compliance." The subcommittee released a report last Monday accusing HSBC, Europe's largest bank, of serving as a conduit for money flowing into the United States from Mexican drug traffickers and Middle Eastern banks with ties to terrorists.
The scandal has spread to Europe as British Trade Minister Lord Green is under scrutiny after it emerged that HSBC continued to operate hundreds of accounts with suspected links to Mexican drug cartels, even after Green and fellow executives were told by regulators that HSBC was one of the worst banks for money laundering. Arrests are said to be imminent in the massive scandal.
There are calls for HSBC Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver to step down with a successor directed to break up the mega-bank into smaller pieces.

The international press is having a field day reporting on crooked banks and calling for nationalization of financial institutions.

But not one of these press reports bothered to mention the enormous risks taken by the news agency that actually broke the news about HSBC's money-laundering schemes.

Beginning early in 2012, utilizing a courageous whistleblower who worked inside the institution for years, WND laid out the whole sordid mess involving these banksters without so much a mention in the rest of the press for six months.

Here's a chronology of the WND investigative reports that brought this scandal to the attention of the public:

"Banking giant accused of laundering billions": In this report by WND senior staff writer Jerome Corsi Feb . 1, it was first revealed that a former employee of HSBC in New York delivered to WND some 1,000 pages of customer account records he claimed were evidence of an international money-laundering scheme involving hundreds of billions of dollars by the global banking giant. John Cruz pulled the documents from the HSBC computer system before he was fired. Cruz was terminated Feb. 17, 2010, after two years at HSBC for "poor performance," but he contends he was let go because senior management didn't want to him to pursue his personal investigation.
The next day, WND followed up that report with this one: "See big bank money-laundering evidence." This story revealed in explicit detail how the money-laundering operation was conducted.
A few days later, in this report, "Paypal, American Express implicated in bank fraud," more details of the money-laundering operation were released.
It was at that moment HSBC began to retaliate against WND for its reporting. The company lodged a complaint that blocked access to a WND story reporting the whistleblower's charge that the London-based corporation has engaged in a massive international money-laundering scheme. The story – "PayPal, American Express implicated in bank fraud" – included redacted images of customer account statements HSBC claimed was an illegal disclosure of personally identifiable information. No personal information was visible in the images, however. HSBC filed the complaint Feb. 9 with a WND Internet service provider, EdgeCast Networks. Access to the article was blocked, but the Internet provider restored access after three hours when an investigation concluded the complaint was unwarranted. HSBC never contacted WND about its complaint with the story. As I said back then, "I've been in journalism for 30 years and in Internet journalism for 15 years. In all that time I have never seen such a blatant and temporarily effective effort at raw censorship by a powerful institution – in this case, one of the world's largest banks." But that was just the beginning of the retribution.
Undeterred by the intimidation, WND continued its series. Making fraudulent loans to corporate accounts that existed in name only was a key part of the alleged money-laundering scheme by HSBC, according to the whistleblower. The evidence includes customer account ledgers for dozens of companies through which the financial institution was laundering money each month, charged Cruz, a former relationship manager for the bank's southern New York region. Still, no other news agency in the world showed any interest.
The other shoe dropped when Corsi was fired by another investment firm for his investigative reports into HSBC. Along with his well-known WND reporting and book-writing, Corsi had served as a senior managing director since 2010 at Gilford Securities, a Manhattan investment firm that serves institutional and retail clients. Corsi said Gilford notified him that it would file a U-5 form with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, to de-register him from the firm due to "corporate reorganization." Gilford Securities declined comment to WND.
Again, undeterred by threats and intimidation, WND continued its investigation – still without acknowledgment of any other news agencies. In May, Corsi broke the story "Banking giant HSBC 'a criminal enterprise'."
Finally, on May 13, WND reported how government regulators and law-enforcement authorities sat on the evidence they had against HSBC until WND blew the whistle on it. Again, the press showed no interest until last week's U.S. Senate hearings brought forth the same evidence – spurring HSBCs compliance officer to step down.

Yet the national and international press has not made a single mention of the groundbreaking work of investigative reporter Jerome Corsi, twice a No. 1 New York Times best-selling author, in the HSBC affair.

He was right about HSBC.

Could it be these press outlets and government officials don't want to mention Corsi's role in the fall of HSBC because of his long-standing association with the Barack Obama identity story?

Where was the rest of the entire press establishment when Corsi, whom many of these entities demeaned as a "conspiracy theorist," was presenting documented evidence of widespread banking fraud?

Where were the defenders of the First Amendment when WND was under attack by Europe's biggest bank and one of the largest financial institutions in the world?

Let's face it: It was WND and Jerome Corsi who busted the banksters of HSBC.

Nevertheless, the state-run media's blackout continues.