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HSBC: Too big to indict
Money-laundering to the tune of $60 trillion in 2010
By
Richard Becker
For a real jaw dropper, the lead paragraph of a Dec. 10 New York
Times article would be hard to beat:
“State and federal authorities decided against indicting HSBC in a
money-laundering case over concerns that criminal charges could
jeopardize one of the world’s largest banks and ultimately destabilize the
global financial system.”
So, there it is: The big banks, no matter how blatant their crimes,
must be protected. They and their executives are free to steal, defraud and
loot without fear of facing prison time.
Despite massive evidence that HSBC had been operating as a
criminal enterprise, the Department of “Justice” opted for another slap-onthe-wrist
fine.
Not that this is anything really new. Since their wild and often
fraudulent schemes led to the bank crash and public bailout in 2008—and
helped trigger the “Great Recession”—not one Wall Street bank executive
has faced criminal prosecution for their crimes.
In lieu of any of their present or former executives being prosecuted,
HSBC has admitted its guilt and agreed to pay $1.9 billion. That might
sound like a lot of money but consider that the federal Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency found that HSBC had $60 trillion in
potentially illegal transactions in 2010.
Despite its own 2010 finding, the OCC, which is supposedly a bank
regulator, did not even fine HSBC at that time.
The real drug kingpins
While it appears that a small percentage of the charges against HSBC
have to do with countries under sanctions by the U.S., including Iran and
Cuba, a huge part of the laundered money came from the drug trade.