Picking up the pieces amid a money-laundering scandal, London-based HSBC Holdings, the parent company of HSBC, has appointed Preeta Bansal as global general counsel for litigation and regulatory affairs, effective as of Oct. 22.

According to an internal company memo, Bansal helps manage litigation and regulatory risk globally. She reports to Chief Legal Officer Stuart Levey and is based in London. Bansal was most recently general counsel and senior policy advisor in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, serving in the Executive Office of the President from 2009 to 2011. She was chief counsel for the executive branch's central review of regulations, legislation, budget preparation, management reform agenda, and presidential executive orders, and was a senior policy adviser on Obama Administration priorities, including financial regulatory reform.

Bansal joined the White House in 2009 after five years in private practice at the New York office of the global law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where she was partner and chair of the appellate litigation and complex legal issues practice. She has additional private sector experience as an attorney with leading international law firms. Bansal's other public sector experiences includes serving as New York Solicitor General; chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; and as law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

In July, a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report charging that global banking giant HSBC and its U.S. affiliate exposed the U.S. financial system to what Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich) called “a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing risks due to poor anti-money laundering (AML) controls.”

According to the allegations, HBUS offered banking services to HSBC Bank Mexico and treated it as a low-risk client, despite its location in a country facing money laundering and drug trafficking challenges. HSBC also circumvented U.S. safeguards to provide U.S. dollars and banking services to some banks, even though they were potentially linked to terrorist groups.