Gangster Bankers Above the Law

[celtic_crippler]

Just goes to show, if you have enough money and influence, you can get away with murder… and then some.

Full Article: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-20130214

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.

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.

Three-time losers doing life in California prisons for street felonies might be surprised to learn that the no-jail settlement Lanny Breuer worked out for HSBC was already the bank's third strike. In fact, as a mortifying 334-page report issued by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last summer made plain, HSBC ignored a truly awesome quantity of official warnings.

Disgusting...

 

[K-man]

Not to forget the thousands of bankers languishing in jail after engineering the GFC. Mmm! Not! :barf:

 

[Tez3]

It doesn't bother to mention that it's the US subsidiary HBUS of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) that was doing this not the UK branch but oh well let's not ruin a big anti colonial story lol. The top guys at HSBC have done the decent thing and taken responsiblility for the US subsidary's actions.

 

[Tez3]

I wouldn't bother mentioning either that the bank was fined an enormous amount of money ($1.9bn) the American executives were sacked and a new chap (Robert Werner) put in to oversee it all but then what's the truth worth these days when you can have a good hate session going on.