The Finsbury Park Mosque, in north London was one of the institutions targeted. The letter came completely out of the blue and with no warning, according to a source at the mosque.
"For clarity, it is not our intention to offer banking facilities to you in the future. I would ask you to refrain from making any applications to open any accounts with us, or indeed any part of the HSBC group," the letter read.
The Finsbury Park Mosque tried to find out the reasons behind this decision, however the bank gave no explanation as to why there was no right of appeal.
"It started in 2014 when we received a letter from HSBC. They said they did not want to provide us with the service and they gave us two months to find another bank we asked for an explanation and they said they can't give us one," a spokesperson for Finsbury Park Mosque told Sputnik.
"It made us feel really sad, I'm shocked that this happened. We was so depressed after the information came to us that our account would be shut down," they added.
Those affected by the account closures were all public figures or had political connections.
So why were Muslim charities, businesses and organizations targeted by the bank?
The problem arose when the BBC discovered the existence of a database called World-Check, which is run by information and media organization Thomson Reuters. it is used by some of the world's biggest banks.
According to the BBC, when the Finsbury Park Mosque was searched for on the website, the first word that came up on the screen in red was "terrorism," in addition to this, data came up indicating that the mosque had links to the attempted London bombings on July 21, 2005 and the shoe bomber Richard Reid.
World-Check provides banks with data about potential criminal or terrorist associations of their customers, as well as their political connections.
"We have had an apology from HSBC plus compensation from Thomson Reuters. But we believe that we have paved the way for other organizations who have been treated unfairly by banks due to poor research by companies like World Check," a spokesperson for Finsbury Park Mosque told Sputnik.
HSBC has refused to comment on the situation. As a result, campaigners are calling on UK parliament to act in order to stop this injustice and protect, honest law-abiding citizens, who are being falsely branded as terrorists, without their knowledge.
