TikTok Owner ByteDance Misled Regulators on Payments Probe

In early 2023, Irish banking regulators contacted ByteDance with a pointed question: Why was the Chinese internet giant and parent company of TikTok moving large sums of money, likely in the tens of millions of dollars, out of its HSBC bank accounts? ByteDance officials quickly sought to assuage their concerns by telling the Irish regulators it was simply moving the money for “liquidity management purposes,” jargon for money transfers designed to ensure the company had plenty of cash on hand.

In reality, that was not what sparked the transfers. Instead, the company had been forced to move the money because HSBC had shuttered its accounts after it discovered deficiencies in the money-laundering controls at ByteDance’s payments division, according to an internal ByteDance presentation to staff and former employees. The U.K.-based bank had scrutinized ByteDance’s controls after a Turkish regulator had raised its own concerns about large sums of money moving through TikTok but going to just a handful of user accounts.