“Last month, HSBC admitted in court pleadings that it had allowed big Mexican and Colombian drug cartels to launder at least $881 million. . . . Those were some of the transgressions uncovered during a two-year investigation led by the Justice and Treasury Departments and acknowledged by HSBC in a settlement, known as a deferred prosecution agreement, that was filed in a federal court in December.
“Not a single executive was charged with a crime. Instead, the bank paid $1.9 billion in fines and forfeitures — or roughly 10 percent of the pretax profits it earned in just 2010, one of the more than five years during which it admitted to criminal conduct. Since 2006, more than a dozen banks have reached settlements with the Justice Department regarding violations related to money laundering. All admitted to criminal offenses; all were handed the equivalent of traffic tickets — pay a fine on your way out the door.”
– Robert Mazur, former federal agent, op- ed, The New York Times
This state of affairs is certainly hard to reconcile in view of how many ordinary individuals are extradited from Colombia, Santo Domingo and Mexico and are serving long sentences for laundering fractions of those extraordinary amounts.
– David Zapp