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 Daniel Wager, who helped investigate HSBC for the federal agency,
joined the HSBC's anti-money laundering team last November as a
senior vice-president. He assumed his new post this week, a
spokesman for the bank told Compliance Complete.
Wager has gained prominence as an authority on anti money-laundering
(AML) issues. Before joining HSBC he headed TD Bank Group's global
enhanced due diligence unit, overseeing the handling of high-risk
clients. In his new role at HSBC's U.S. unit, Wager is to oversee
AML compliance across all business lines.
Prior to entering the private sector in August 2011, Wager was a
supervisory special agent with Homeland Security's investigations
arm and led a New York-based, multi-agency financial intelligence
unit.
Among other things, Wager played a role in probing AML lapses at
HSBC, sources familiar with his background said.
In December 2012, the bank paid to U.S. authorities what was then a
record fine of $1.9 billion to resolve charges that it failed to
stop hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money from flowing
through the bank from Mexico, and promised at the time to fix AML
lapses.
The U.S. government has led a crackdown on financial institutions
that fail to adequately guard against improper transactions.
Despite a number of high-profile hires, HSBC has struggled to
convince U.S. regulators that the AML controls surrounding
correspondent banking, one of its riskiest and most profitable lines
of business, are in order.
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Two top legal officials at HSBC's U.S. arm, anti-money laundering
director Alan Schienberg and chief compliance officer Gary Peterson,
left in November amid HSBC's compliance overhaul.
HSBC recently hired former JPMorgan executive Jessica Gomel in a new
position, global head of financial crime compliance for
correspondent banking, to try to bolster its ability to police
currency clearing and other activity. Wager is positioned to support
that effort, the sources said.
As part of a restructuring that relies on regional heads of
"financial crimes compliance" to police transactions, HSBC last
month hired former Bank of America executive Patty O'Connor to be
its U.S. regional head.
Wager will report to O'Connor as well as Peter Hazlewood, HSBC's
London-based global head of AML.
(This article was produced by the
Compliance Complete service of Thomson Reuters Accelus (http://accelus.thomsonreuters.com).
Compliance Complete provides regulatory news, analysis, rules and
developments, with global coverage of more than 400 regulators and
exchanges.)
(Editing by Randall Mikkelsen, Bernard Orr)
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