A British private investigator jailed in China in the wake of GlaxoSmithKline’s bribery scandal has been blacklisted by banks, including HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland, after authorities helped bring him back to the UK.
Peter Humphrey, who was convicted after a closed-door trial in 2014 of illegally obtaining information on Chinese citizens, told the Financial Times that HSBC had withdrawn his personal and business accounts without explanation on his repatriation last year after a decades-long relationship. RBS’s offshore arm, with whom he had banked since 2012, also pulled services.
While the banks declined to comment to the FT on specific cases, Mr Humphrey believes that the reason they closed his accounts was because of a confidential database used by 49 of the world’s 50 biggest banks, including HSBC and RBS.