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In reply to the discussion: Third prominent banker found dead in six days [View all]RainDog
(28,784 posts)30. HSBC was also laundering money for the Sinoloa drug cartel
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-approves-1-9b-drug-money-laundering-accord.html
HSBC was accused of failing to monitor more than $670 billion in wire transfers and more than $9.4 billion in purchases of U.S. currency from HSBC Mexico, allowing for money laundering, prosecutors said. The bank also violated U.S. economic sanctions against Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba, according to a criminal information filed in the case.
The bank, Europes largest, agreed to pay a $1.25 billion forfeiture and $665 million in civil penalties under the settlement, prosecutors announced in December. At a hearing the same month, Gleeson told prosecutors there had been publicized criticism of the agreement, which lets the bank and management avoid further criminal proceedings over the charges.
Gleeson said he will continue supervising implementation of the deal, under which the bank agreed not to contest criminal charges of failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program, failing to conduct due diligence, and violating the Trading With the Enemy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Lack of proper controls allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico and the Norte del Valle cartel in Colombia to move more than $881 million through HSBCs U.S. unit from 2006 to 2010, the government alleged in the case. The bank also cut resources for its anti-money-laundering programs to cut costs and increase profits, the government said in court filings.
The bank, Europes largest, agreed to pay a $1.25 billion forfeiture and $665 million in civil penalties under the settlement, prosecutors announced in December. At a hearing the same month, Gleeson told prosecutors there had been publicized criticism of the agreement, which lets the bank and management avoid further criminal proceedings over the charges.
Gleeson said he will continue supervising implementation of the deal, under which the bank agreed not to contest criminal charges of failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program, failing to conduct due diligence, and violating the Trading With the Enemy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Lack of proper controls allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico and the Norte del Valle cartel in Colombia to move more than $881 million through HSBCs U.S. unit from 2006 to 2010, the government alleged in the case. The bank also cut resources for its anti-money-laundering programs to cut costs and increase profits, the government said in court filings.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-20130214
Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail: How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it
The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians, lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit but they didn't extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses.
People may have outrage fatigue about Wall Street, and more stories about billionaire greedheads getting away with more stealing often cease to amaze. But the HSBC case went miles beyond the usual paper-pushing, keypad-punching sort-of crime, committed by geeks in ties, normally associated with Wall Street. In this case, the bank literally got away with murder well, aiding and abetting it, anyway.
For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years people so totally evil, jokes former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, that "they make the guys on Wall Street look good." The bank also moved money for organizations linked to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped countries like Iran, the Sudan and North Korea evade sanctions; and, in between helping murderers and terrorists and rogue states, aided countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash.
"They violated every goddamn law in the book," says Jack Blum, an attorney and former Senate investigator who headed a major bribery investigation against Lockheed in the 1970s that led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. "They took every imaginable form of illegal and illicit business."
(great read)
Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail: How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it
The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians, lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit but they didn't extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses.
People may have outrage fatigue about Wall Street, and more stories about billionaire greedheads getting away with more stealing often cease to amaze. But the HSBC case went miles beyond the usual paper-pushing, keypad-punching sort-of crime, committed by geeks in ties, normally associated with Wall Street. In this case, the bank literally got away with murder well, aiding and abetting it, anyway.
For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years people so totally evil, jokes former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, that "they make the guys on Wall Street look good." The bank also moved money for organizations linked to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped countries like Iran, the Sudan and North Korea evade sanctions; and, in between helping murderers and terrorists and rogue states, aided countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash.
"They violated every goddamn law in the book," says Jack Blum, an attorney and former Senate investigator who headed a major bribery investigation against Lockheed in the 1970s that led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. "They took every imaginable form of illegal and illicit business."
(great read)
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You know, as assassin could force poison down your throat or blow your brains out
bluestate10
Feb 2014
#170
Or even Saddam Hussein. I mean how would it look to future puppets if we really let him die?
rwsanders
Feb 2014
#110
HSBC has quite a track recored of being a sleazy bank. HSBC should merge with BOA. n/t
RKP5637
Feb 2014
#77
There was also this recent news that the DEA negotiated with the Sinaloa cartel
RainDog
Feb 2014
#40
And remember "emerging economy problems" was the explanation for the run of really bad days
BlueStreak
Feb 2014
#37
That was Capital calling their money home. I see as noted above a China problem.
Ikonoklast
Feb 2014
#83
That's what struck me when they did it. It seemed like a really desperate move.
Squinch
Feb 2014
#145
Hmmm...is there something coming down the pike that we don't know about?
Baitball Blogger
Feb 2014
#5
We've been riding the greatest pyramid scheme in history. In 2008 the can was kicked
rhett o rick
Feb 2014
#6
As long as it doesn't make it to the washer woman level, I guess it was just a matter
Baitball Blogger
Feb 2014
#8
It's an egregious system that feeds on itself like a cancer and if one extrapolates it out it
RKP5637
Feb 2014
#76
The being pushed off bridges and buildings type of suicide is also a thing.
Fantastic Anarchist
Feb 2014
#153
Yes, as I said below, the collapse was only postponed. It still has to happen sooner or later...
ChisolmTrailDem
Feb 2014
#20
Yep, agree. See my post #76. The system could work, but greed and shenanigans are too great. The
RKP5637
Feb 2014
#80
Well, what happened was that the criminals were allowed to get away with it and so
ChisolmTrailDem
Feb 2014
#112
I heard the crash that was avoided in 2008 with TARP (among others) is still going to happen
ChisolmTrailDem
Feb 2014
#19
I literally just walked to BofA and cashed my paycheck and then walked to
ChisolmTrailDem
Feb 2014
#146
I don't know if that's sarcastic or not it might not be so far off the mark
VanillaRhapsody
Feb 2014
#38
What do you call a thousand investment bankers at the bottom of the ocean?
Egalitarian Thug
Feb 2014
#52
Our heavily manipulated faux economy may be running out of manipulations.
democratisphere
Feb 2014
#78
k and r--bookmarking for later reading. either they all know something really bad, or they had help
niyad
Feb 2014
#93
The DOJ is investigating big money re violation of bribery laws involving Libya's investment fund
siligut
Feb 2014
#144
A Rash of Deaths and a Missing Reporter – With Ties to Wall Street Investigations
mirrera
Feb 2014
#159
Microbiologists were dying under strange circumstances during the post-9/11 anthrax attacks...
radhika
Feb 2014
#161
they're already too big to fail and too big to jail, what other shoe will drop?
WillYourVoteBCounted
Feb 2014
#162