In February 2013 a compliance officer at HSBC raised concerns with the bank’s financial crimes investigation team about funds flowing through an account held within its private bank in Switzerland. The account was Forry Associates, a company controlled by Raja Salameh, the brother of Lebanon’s central bank governor at the time, Riad Salameh. More than a hundred million dollars had passed through the account with little information about the nature of the transactions. The compliance officer found the activity suspicious. After an initial review by HSBC’s investigations team, the issue was escalated to senior managers who oversee assessments of politically exposed persons, according to people familiar with a French judicial probe. They decided to keep the relationship with Forry Associates going. That decision could prove costly for HSBC. It has helped put Europe’s largest lender at the centre of a huge money-laundering scandal that involves the alleged embezzlement of hundreds of …