The flip side to corruption is that the money has to go somewhere. Obviously, a facilitation payment of $100 can go into a foreign official’s pocket—but, when corruption happens on a larger scale, there must be a bank ready to park the millions garnered from the fraud.
A recent case involving $500 million that was allegedly sent by the sovereign wealth fund of Angola to U.K. bank HSBC and then turned up in an account at Standard Chartered perfectly illustrates that point.
The funds sent to HSBC were allegedly confirmed with a document from the sovereign wealth fund of Angola, but it now appears that confirmation was a forgery and HSBC is denying it received any money. What’s more, the British government has frozen all accounts associated with the funds.
It is alleged that José Filomeno dos Santos, the former chair of the Angolan...