The HSBC has opened offshore current accounts in its Maldives branch for domestic corporate sector clients, who used the government’s external commercial borrowing scheme (ECBS), sundaytimes.lk reported earlier.

The ECBS was available from January 2013 to December last year.

The multinational banking corporation’s local branch allowed local companies to borrow outside Sri Lanka up to US$ 30 million or its equivalent value in any other foreign currency.

These transactions were done via various Sri Lanka-based banks.

The regulator, Central Bank, is now looking into the matter.

Also, the practice of alleged figure-fudging or manipulating interest rates had been going on at the HSBC for at least six years without being flagged by operations, internal audit, finance, credit risk management or external auditors of the bank, sundaytimes.lk added.

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