30 July 2014 Last updated at 04:00
HSBC closes some Muslim groups' and individuals' accounts
By Dominic Laurie Reporter, Radio 5 live
HSBC bank has written to Finsbury Park Mosque and other Muslim organisations and individuals in the UK to tell them that their accounts will be closed.
The reason given in some cases was that to continue providing services would be outside the bank's "risk appetite".
The wife and teenage children of a man who runs a London based Islamic think tank have also been contacted.
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"The letters that have been sent and the letters that we received do not give any reason why the accounts were closed in the first place," he said.
"That has led us to believe that the only reason this has happened is because of an Islamophobic campaign targeting Muslim charities in the UK."
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The mosque's chairman Mohammed Kozbar told the BBC: "The bank didn't even contact us beforehand. Didn't give us a chance even to address [their] concerns.
"For us it is astonishing - we are a charity operating in the UK, all our operations are here in the UK and we don't transfer any money out of the UK. All our operations are funded from funds within the UK."
Until 2005, the mosque was run by Abu Hamza, who in May this year was convicted of terrorism offences in the United States.
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Jeremy Corbyn, the local MP for Finsbury Park, says he has worked with the mosque ever since it was built.
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"I am shocked and appalled at the decision of HSBC."
Anas Al Tikriti was born in Baghdad but has lived in the UK for several decades. His family has also received letters. He runs the Cordoba Foundation, a think tank on Islamic issues set up in 2005 in order to address, he says, the relationship between Europe and the Middle East.
He, his wife and his sons aged 16 and 12 all received separate letters this week from HSBC informing them that their accounts would be closed in September. This time, no reason was given.
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"I can only speculate - and I wish someone from the bank could explain [why the accounts were closed]. The organisations are mainly charities and the link is that many of them if not all of them are vocal on the issue of Palestine."
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His think tank, the Cordoba Foundation, which also banks with HSBC, was also told that its account will close, with an almost identical letter to that sent to the Finsbury Park Mosque, and dated the same day.
'Alternative arrangements'
Ummah Welfare trust, based in Bolton, has distributed £70m to projects in 20 countries. It has had a presence in Gaza for 10 years.
... HSBC gave Ummah the same reason for closing its account that it had given to the Finsbury Park Mosque - that "provision of banking services now falls outside our risk appetite".
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Mohammed Ahmad, who runs Ummah, says it is a dream customer for a bank and always in credit.
He asked HSBC in a meeting why the accounts were closing, but says the bank's representative gave them no answer.
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Mr Ahmad says he thinks HSBC has made its decision because of its work in Gaza, where he says Ummah provides "ambulances, food aid, medical aid, and grants."
"We make sure we go out of the way to work with organisations that are non-partisan. What we do now is we do a check on Thomson Reuters and make sure that there is no link whatsoever with blacklisted organisations. We don't want to damage our relief efforts. We have tried our best to be non-partisan as much as possible."
A government official the BBC spoke to said they did not believe this was the result of government action but reflected a decision the bank had taken itself based on its own risk analysis.
In December 2012, HSBC had to pay US authorities $1.9bn (£1.2bn) in a settlement over money laundering, the largest paid in such a case. It was alleged to have helped launder money belonging to drug cartels and states under US sanctions.
In August last year, it was reported that HSBC asked more than 40 embassies, consulates and High Commissions in the UK to close their accounts. At the time, the bank said "HSBC has been applying a rolling programme of "five filter" assessments to all its businesses since May 2011, and our services for embassies are no exception."
The Charities Commission has confirmed that it is not investigating any of the organisations involved and says that if the charities don't have a relationship with a bank it could harm public trust in their work.
EXTRACTS ONLY ... complete @...
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HSBC
HSBC Holdings plc is a British multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the world's largest banks. It was founded in London in 1991 by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation to act as a new group holding company.
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COMMENT
Does this strike anyone as creepy?
Since when are banks in the business of closing accounts?
If they're that worried about money laundering, maybe they should get out of banking?
