can some of the media people in this group, or friends of us if they are in the
media not highlight this ? an article in the newspaper ? show them that pratap
is not alone, and they cannot get away with these cheap tactics?
________________________________
From: Aditya Bondyopadhyay <adit.b...@gmail.com>
To: Sogi <sogi-l...@arc-international.net>
Sent: Friday, 4 September, 2009 10:19:34 PM
Subject: g_b Call to boycott HSBC Bank for Homophobia: In Solidarity with
Pratap Paikary
Dear all,
Please read the horrible way in which HSBC Bank has treated Pratap Paikary, an
openly gay individual from Bangalore who has been active in various activist
efforts in India as well. The full course of correspondence is pasted below. It
is shameful that an international bank that claims to be the world's local bank
catering to every individual's needs, would stoop to these cheal and disgusting
levels against a person, merely because of his homosexuality. It is now not in
any doubt that this bank suffers from almost incurable homophobia.
As a concerned individual and as an activst who has fought against homophobia
in all spehere that it exhibits itself, I send out this appeal to all of you to
boycott HSBC Bank. Please hit back where it hurts the bank most, deny them the
privilege to handle your money.
Here is what you can do:
>Close your savings and current accounts with the HSBC bank and move it to
>another bank that knows how to respect LGBTI persons
>If you have taken loans from HSBC, please renegotiate these loans with another
>bank and move it to them.
>Return your HSBC Credit cards
>Do not let HSBC manage your assets or your investment portfolio.
I am sure if you have anyother form of dealings with HSBC you would also agree
to close them and move themto other more civilised banks.
Please spread this request to all your LGBTI networks and groups, and to all
supporters, so that HSBC learns that a persons sexuality is his business and
not theirs. So that they learn that respect is a local trait everywhere and the
world's local bank needs to show it to individuals.
Best regards,
Aditya Bondyopadhyay
++++++++++++ ++++
From: Tristan Tadhgh O'Legion <tristantadhgholegio n...@gmail.com>
Dear Mike,
It has come to my attention that in addition to spying on my phone and
following me around, the Asian hierarchy of HSBC [in particular, Ms Naina Lal
Kidwai, Head of HSBC India, Ms Sonal Davé, COO of HSBC India and Mr Rumi
Contractor, Head of HSBC GR] has now descended to bribing or otherwise coercing
prospective employers not to hire me [having already had some success in this
regard with my (former) friends and lawyers]. Needless to say, this is illegal
in addition to being unethical and flies in the face of the bank's stated
concern for my wellbeing [as elaborated upon by Mr G Ahluwalia] and the
relieving letter wishing me 'success in my future endeavours'. It is admittedly
ingenuously homophobic. I also suffered an unfortunate accident yesterday which
I survived [but not without significant injury]: I would like to believe that
the bank had nothing to do with it. However, you may come to find that buying
the entire judicial and legal system in this
country [not to mention my extended family and the national media] is going to
be a somewhat tenuous proposition even for Europe's largest bank [and the
world's richest]. I do not believe that any of this has either your
authorisation or your consent. Please arrange to have this harassment stopped
STAT [as in yesterday if that is possible].
Yours sincerely,
Pratap Patrick Paikaray
[Bengalūru, South India].
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tristan Tadhgh O'Legion <tristantadhgholegio n...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 4:36 PM
Subject: Continuing harassment [Fwd: CONSVMMΛTVM EST: Endgame: No access to
Compliance Disclosure Telephone Line/HGHQ/HSBC now, at least not from my
workstation! !!]
To: MichaelGeoghegan@ hsbc.com
Dear Mike,
Two months back on 26th June, '09, Mr Gaurav Ahluwalia [SVP, HR, HSBC India]
offered me financial assistance [read bribe] to the tune of approximately five
lakh Indian Rupees [on behalf of Ms NL Kidwai & Mr Rumi Contractor] to
'resign', an offer I was happy to accept. I had presumed that this would stop
the bank from spying on me and my friends and acquaintances. However, this mode
of harassment which began during Yuletide last year [coinciding with my
escalation to you about the homophobia of the bank's Asian hierarchy and the
discrimination I faced at work] continues inspite of my 'resignation'. I am,
therefore, constrained [once again] to bring the matter to your attention.
Incidentally, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code or IPC no longer applies to
consensual sex in private between gay and/or queer adults in the country [with
the possible exception of the tiny Presbyterian majority state of Mizoram in NE
India]. As a former employee and current
customer, I urge you to intervene now to foil the homophobic attitudes and
policies of your bank's hierarchy in this country.
Yours sincerely,
Pratap Patrick Paikaray
[Bengalūru, South India].
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tristan Tadhgh O'Legion <tristantadhgholegio n...@gmail.com>
Date: 2009/5/20
Subject: CONSVMMΛTVM EST [Endgame: No access to Compliance Disclosure Telephone
Line/HGHQ/HSBC now, at least not from my workstation! !!]
To: ComplianceDisclosur el...@hsbc. com, MichaelGeoghegan@ hsbc.com
Cc: anarr...@yahoo. co.in, beata.baranova@ hsbc.com, fredjackson@ hsbc.com,
fw...@hotmail. com, pppaika...@yahoo. co.uk, siddharth.narrain@ gmail.com,
syd...@gmail. com, ushajeeperi@ altlawforum. org
Dear Mike,
Ms [Rakhi] Puri warned me that even talking about homosexuality was illegal in
India as per the relevant Section [377] of the IPC [which is another untruth
that may stem from prejudice rather than misinformation] and that I would be
well advised to shut up [and about the document SVRSVM CORDΛ as well in
addition to talk of queer dignity] to avoid offending any one of the thousands
of employees in Asia who could be [homo]phobic. She went on to add that Mr
[Chris R] Rogers, the new City Manager in Bangalore, was not "like Mona who was
sympathetic" and that shutting up would help me keep the job which she "knew I
needed". This was when I pointed out to her that CNN websites relating to the
progress of same sex marriage laws in the United States were now being randomly
blocked on certain days and on certain computers. She went on to add that she
had forbidden me from using the document when she met me to discuss it nearly
two years back!!! This is another
lie as her own internal LotusNotes communications to me at the time not only
indicated that she understood I used it on most of my calls, but also that she
herself thought it would be incredibly useful if better organised.
Altho' I passed the Action Plan I was placed on [to improve Authentication/
Compliance/ KYC] with flying colours [even tho' I say so myself], barely a
month had passed before I was deemed to have failed 2 of the 10 calls monitored
for quality [including Authentication/ Compliance/ KYC] in the month of April
[with us reporting from the first to the nineteenth of the month to Mr MK
Punjabi and from the twentieth to the thirtieth to Ms Prema Latha Gurumurthy].
Both the failures were breathtakingly gobsmacking: in one, a customer of
Eastern European origin who had an American mortgage with us did not understand
me when I asked if he was the only owner on the account or if there were joint
owners. I rephrased the question asking simply for the owners on the account.
According to Mr Punjabi, this rephrasing constituted a hint that the account
had a joint owner. Mr Punjabi monitored the calls for the first two weeks
leaving the calls for the third and fourth
weeks to be monitored by Ms PL Gurumurthy.
However, the calls that Ms Gurumurthy chose to monitor as third week calls were
again from Week 2 [when I was in Mr Punjabi's team]: according to my MO, Mr NU
Khan, this is done all the time and he himself had passed off one week's calls
as another week's whenever it was deemed convenient!! ! On one of these 'Week
3' calls from a certain Ms Nacheff, Ms Gurumurthy marked me down for "not
sounding confident" which was untrue as far as the customer's questions related
to deposit accounts/internet banking [which is what I'm trained on]. Ms
Nacheff's question on a particular debit card, tho', related to our Security
Services Department and I was able to conference with our colleague in SS, Mr
Charles Prabhukumar Theodore, who advised me that I could ask the customer not
to worry on that count. When I asked Ms Gurumurthy where she thought I had
sounded less than confident, she could not say...it seemed to have been a
feeling she had. My apparent instance of
hesitation relating to the SS question was picked up later by her manager [and
my MO], Mr NU Khan, who [nevertheless] overruled her [after he had determined
that I was likely to escalate].
Ms Gurumurthy marked the other 'Week 3' call [she monitored for quality] as an
Authentication/ Compliance/ KYC failure; this call was from a High Risk
Authenticated customer who was not sure which debit card was closed because
they had so many. Apart from being High Risk KYCed [having come in TAC
verified], she had given me not only her own full name but also the full name
of the joint A/C holder [her husband] in addition to the last four digits of
the relevant cards that were open. Ms Gurumurthy said that revealing the last 4
digits of the closed card number constituted a Compliance failure because
closed cards could still be used to shop on the internet!!! She later denied
this and said it was a failure by the rulebook and she was sure that everybody
could learn new rules from that [elusive] book even after having taken calls
for even as long as five years!!! Mr Khan [as usual] had a different take on
the matter: he felt that if Compliance required
account numbers or parts thereof to be withheld from customers, it implicitly
required the same discipline of closed A/Cs [regardless of there being no
potential for the latter to be fraudulently misused]. Ms Gurumurthy was happy
to toe this line: she declared that it "went without saying". [Incidentally,
the only 'Week 4' call she monitored was also [actually] taken when I was in Mr
Punjabi's team.]
The next day, while I was listening to a customer, she barged in [without a
hint of an apology] asking me to sign an Action Plan document [which nobody had
taken the trouble to discuss or review with me], pointing to where she required
my signature even as I was apologising to the customer for the interruption
that required her to repeat herself. Before Prema left for the day, she came
over to my desk again [again while I was with a customer], picked up the sheet,
checking to see if it was finally signed - it was not - and left. Last night,
she denied having done that saying she had merely created a draft of the Action
Plan for me to review at leisure. She did not care to deny that she had
interrupted my conversation with the customer; it was as if she didn't think
that particularly important. Mr Khan suggested that I was confused about what
Prema had actually said on the previous day [adding that I had already agreed
that I wasn't sure about what had
been said]. This is an old law of the jungle: the wolf decides what the lamb
heard or didn't hear. Of course, like Ms Gurumurthy, Mr Khan, did not appear at
all hassled about the inconvenience to the customer in htis instance.
Meanwhile, basketball matches were being played on the floor with the scores
shouted and argued about in English and the vernacular [to build employee
morale]: even while customers struggled with our accents and everybody
struggled with the [phone] connections [which can be perfectly dreadful ever so
often]. The falsehood was getting to me 'gain and Mr Ganesh Sharma [currently
Deputy Centre Manager] who had advised me that any escalation to you [or to
HSBC Compliance] was unnecessary [since his own good offices were available to
resolve CRC and/or local site escalations] , was both 'out of office' and
incommunicado.
Miscarriages of justice and failure to adopt policies consistent with the GSM
or Group Standards Manual are considered violations of HSBC's Core Standards.
According to our Group Compliance website, the Compliance Disclosure escalation
route should be used when an employee believes that using the normal reporting
channels is not possible OR that there are no organisational means available to
raise their concerns OR that they will suffer intimidation, retaliation or
reprisals. As such, nothing indicates the guilt of the Asian hierarchy more
clearly than the fact that my access to this route has been blocked thro'
LotusNotes at the workplace. Of course, there is also the question of HOW IT
ALL BEGAN last Yuletide. Section 4.7 of our Group Standards Manual includes
EXCESSIVE SUPERVISION/ DETAILED CHECKING OF WORK among its listed examples of
nonverbal bullying. It is the case of the local hierarchy that this merely
HAPPENED to coincide with the unsent email
escalation to you [RELATING TO GLOBE] in my LotusNotes draftbox last
Christmas. Their case is certainly fraying at the edges [if not already wearing
rather thin].
Down the ages, pioneers for justice have quoted the wag to say, "First they
laugh at you; then they fight you; then you win'. They may have been very
wrong...perhaps, the quote was only a figure of speech.
Thanks and warm regards,
Pratap Patrick Paikaray [Tristan Tadhgh O'Legion]
Employee ID 43353676, HDPI Bangalore, South India.
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