The letter landed on Feb. 28, addressed to HSBC Group Chief Executive Noel Quinn, and it did not mince words. Thirteen bipartisan senators and congressmen, writing through the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, demanded that Europe’s second-largest bank “justify” why it had frozen accounts belonging to Hong Kong activists, independent media outlets and civic groups, “including whether these actions were requested by Hong Kong authorities or officials from the People’s Republic of China”.
The ledger they attached ran long. HSBC, for which Hong Kong is the single biggest market, had frozen the accounts of former lawmaker Ted Hui and his family, of Pastor Ray Chan and his church, and of Jimmy Lai, his aide Mark Simon and Apple Daily CEO Cheung Kim-hung at the now shuttered newspaper. The Hong Kong Alliance had its assets frozen and was forced to close, with former top officers charged and refused bail under the security law Beijing imposed in 2020; a “corporate account used to raise funds” for a non-profit that “provided legal, medical, food, and education assistance to protestors” was closed as well.
The human texture is what Mark Simon remembers. “What shocked me most about the HSBC freezing of my Hong Kong account was how I was banned by HSBC US, still am, from sending wires and how HSBC staff in the U.S. at my branch knew much more of my situation with HSBC HK than was rational”, he said. “It wasn’t just my checking accounts that were frozen, it was business accounts”, and: “I missed payments and payrolls.”
The bank’s answer was procedural. “Like every bank, we are required to operate within the law and legal frameworks of all the countries and territories in which we operate”, a spokeswoman said, adding that HSBC would work to address the questions. Context mattered here: Peter Tung-shun Wong, who led HSBC Asia as its CEO and sits on the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, signed a petition supporting the security law in June 2020 under the slogan “Anti-Hong Kong Independence, Anti-Subversion, Anti-Terrorism, Anti-Intervention”.
The senators’ bottom line was blunt. Accounts of American citizens, they wrote, were being restricted “including at HSBC branches in the United States”, a practice that, if true, “is unacceptable and requires immediate rectification”, and they asked the bank to reverse all actions taken. Behind the request sits the law’s record: it has, in the commission’s words, “put almost the entirety of the city’s opposition figures behind bars and denied bail to most”, while loyalty-oath rounds in October 2021 led prosecutors toward dozens of councillors judged insincere. For the customers involved, the freeze is not an abstraction; it is payroll day that does not come.
Sources
- U.S. lawmakers ask HSBC’s CEO about frozen accounts of Hong Kong activists – Hong Kong News
- Congress Demands Answers After Americans' Bank Accounts Frozen – Daily Pol
