No-one at HSBC charged over laundering drug money

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HSBC a now familiar name in the British retail banking sector has received a settlement deal from U.S. Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer that amounts to not much more than a slap on the wrist for laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels and violating a host of international banking laws (the Haze can scarcely believe this!)

The $1.9 billion fine amounts to five weeks of the bank’s income.

It seems beyond strange that the employees of HSBC will not have to give up penny of the money they earned from this huge and totally illegal operation or face one day of jail time or even a court room!

Anyone convicted of even low level drug dealing in the U.S. can expect asset seizure, house searches and a long stretch of jail time. So why is it that drug dealers (often young black americans scratching a living to pay for their own habit) get these draconian sanctions and people behind a scam that laundered billions of dollars for high end drug barons get away with the champagne bubbles still fizzing?

Rolling Stone magazine had this to say:

“They’re now saying that if you’re not an important cog in the global financial system, you can’t get away with anything, not even simple possession. You will be jailed and whatever cash they find on you they’ll seize on the spot, and convert into new cruisers or toys for your local SWAT team, which will be deployed to kick in the doors of houses where more such inessential economic cogs as you live.”

…on the other hand, if you are an important person, and you work for a big international bank, you won’t be prosecuted even if you launder nine billion dollars. Even if you actively collude with the people at the very top of the international narcotics trade, your punishment will be far smaller than that of the person at the very bottom of the world drug pyramid.”

HSBC itself has had to replace nearly all of its senior management – quite why the U.S. justice system feels unable to prosecute ANYONE is an extraordinary testimony to the corruptive reach of corporate power – not even the highest courts in the land could dare to attack a corporation like HSBC.

Every single person ever held on a drug charge in the U.S, now knows that their real mistake was not to possess or deal in drugs – but to be independent of the fuzzy embrace of the corruption sponsored by banks like HSBC.