As I have previously noted, the police, without any act of parliament and through the College of Policing have decided, in 2014, that they will no longer be the preferred authority to investigate bank fraud (“financial crime”) but that the regulators should deal with it. However, they have gone one step further and have decided, with Home Office approval, to outsource investigation of financial crime to private practice lawyers:

Herbert Smith Freehills act for HSBC, this announcement from Herbert Smith is dated June 2016:

I have of course reported HSBC fraud to the City of London Police on many occasions. But it gets worse. The Financial Conduct Authority has an “independent” committee which decides which cases require regulatory action, the Regulations Decisions Committee and in January 2016 the FCA appointed Tim Parkes, of Herbert Smith, Chairman of the committee:

Should you be thinking, oh well, there’s always the Serious Fraud Office to prosecute bank fraud, think again. At the same time as the College of Policing decided fraud was not for them, the SFO announced that they would take advantage of the US model of Deferred Prosecution Agreements, whereby individual bank staff are not prosecuted, but a fine is imposed with a promise of good behaviour in the future: