Scathing Report Details Money Laundering at HSBC The global bank HSBC has been used by Mexican drug cartels looking to get cash back into the United States, by Saudi Arabian banks that needed access to dollars despite their terrorist ties, and by Iranians who wanted to circumvent United States sanctions. A 335-page report set to be released Tuesday levels these accusations and says that both bank executives and regulators at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ignored warning signs and failed to stop the illegal behavior at various times between 2001 and 2010. The report is the product of a yearlong investigation by a United States Senate subcommittee, which points to HSBC as an indication of a broader problem of illegal money flowing through international financial institutions into the United States, and the failure of American bank regulators to catch the problems. "Banks that ignore money laundering rules are a big problem for our country," said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who leads the subcommittee. Also troubling is a bank regulator that does not adequately do its job. HSBC executives are expected to apologize for the shortcomings in its internal controls in a hearing of the subcommittee, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, on Tuesday. The company said in a statement on Monday that "we will apologize, acknowledge these mistakes, answer for our actions and give our absolute commitment to fixing what went wrong." Mr. Levin, however, said on Monday that HSBC had promised to fix similar problems in the past and failed. "While the bank is saying all the right things, and that is fine, it has said all the right things before," he said. The report is unlikely to be the end of HSBC's problems. The bank has disclosed that the issues with money laundering are also being investigated by the Department of Justice and could lead to criminal charges and "significant" fines, which analysts have estimated could reach $1 billion.