HSBC buys get out of jail free card..
 

HSBC the British banking giant, will pay $1.9 billion to settle a money-laundering probe by federal and state authorities in the United States, a law enforcement official said Monday.

Gotta love American justice, if you have enough money you never have to worry about getting caught in the act.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57558342/report-hsbc-to-pay-$1.9b-to-settle-laundering-probe/

Yea. American Justice.....

They did get caught in the act. Now they are paying for it. They didnt kill someone. Try living in Russia, then you will really know how far money takes you. You are lost my friend...

All the anti-american hate on this board with not a clue :( So sad for you folks.

Fair deal.

unbelievable fine.

They got caught and were ordered to pay 1.9 Billion in fines. Why do you think that so hard to comprehend for you?

when is BOA up?

Just business as usual and the fine is just a cost of doing business. Much like the slap on wrist fines levied at BP and other big corps... You just pay and move on.

I am an American and I feel this isn't justice. If I as an individual helped support Mexican drug lords or bankrolled Iran you think I'd get the same buy my self out of trouble deal?

They want to claim corporations have the same rights as people, well then that street should go both ways and they should face the same penalties as a person does if they break the law.

There is nothing to stop them from doing it again, if they determine the profit margin justifies the risk. This is the problem with letting them "buy" their way out of trouble with a fine because none of the officers of the company are at threat of any punishment for their actions. Meaning this just becomes a cost of doing business that can be weighed by risk vs reward.

These fines always get negotiated down in most cases by lawyers.They are just used for big headlines then get lowered in backroom deals.

The money is irrelevant because it's just as I mentioned before it's a risk of doing business on the "profit" side vs "criminal". No one serves any jail time and they are free to do it once again once the heat settles down if they determine the profit is worth the risk.

Money talks

Sad truth..

Who do you blame. It is a company. They did not kill anyone. The law says if they do what they do, this is what the end result is. Banks launder money every day. They are a bank. Typically if there is a person behind it. That person gets in trouble. It happens everyday. Martha Stewert and so on....I am sure if there was a specific person at fault they are in trouble. Read more in to it..

Also, in a lot of other countries you can literally buy your freedom. Even if the law says you spend the rest of your life in jail. This is not what is happening here.

A British bank failed to comply with certain American banking regulations, (that only apply to banks that have offices in the US). The British Bank was fined a HUGE amount by the American government for their non-compliance.


End of story.




According to your logic Crockett, you should be pissed at all the OTHER countries in the world that do not require the same reporting criteria that the US does. HSBC is not breaking laws in any other country, only in the US, therefore all of the other countries are failing to require the same level of AML compliance.


You aren't making sense here. Why aren't you lashing out at the UK for failing to implement tighter regulations for their own banks? The US has BY FAR the strictest and most heavily enforced anti-money laundering regulations in the world. This is why they paid this fine in the US and nowhere else. According to your logic you should be applauding the US here.





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Though I know that it is likely based on the economy and not this, I found it ironic that last night they emailed to say they were dropping the rate of online savings accounts to .30 APY

Someone has to pay those fines, I suppose.

I feel what you are saying.

White collar crime has its perks.

I think if Corporations break the law in a major way, to the point that someone really should be serving jail time, their "jail time" should be that all profits for the prison term should be given back to the government, including shareholders. Freeze stocks, and in 6 months when they're "out of jail" they can begin trading again and earning profits.

I don't get it, the logic behind jailing someone in this case instead of fining them, this is absolutely the correct action, what good would putting any of these guys in Jail do? This is a public company, with 1000's of shareholders, the shareholders own the company, all of them. How would any of them suffer by putting a few executives in jail? and How would the US benefit from it?

by putting say 10 executives in jail. 10 guys at the company get big promotions, and the owners of the company do not suffer at all. by Fining them 1.9 Billion dollars, you are completely wiping out a quarterly dividend for the entire ownership of the company. The US government just took 3 months income from every investment in HSBC. They hit them right where it matters.

punishment is meant to inflict hardship on the offender. For a company, the best way to do that is to impose fines and make the ownership of the company suffer. For an individual, the best way to do that is to take away their freedom. But I can guarantee you that if you had 1.9 Billion laying around, the Gov would much rather take that from you than throw you in jail.

how much money were they accused of laundering?

I'd like to know the percentage to calculate the fine and jail time for someone..haha

No it's not end of story it's bull shit. The reason the feds didn't go criminal with the case is because yet once again a bank is "too big to fail".

A nice quote on the matter from NYtimes..

"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."

Clearly showing that if you have enough money you can do the crime with out doing the time. Nice write up on this very subject..

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/...ey-laundering/

The end result being the "only" reason criminal charges were not filed was because the bank was too big to fail and bringing criminal charges against it's officers would have caused that failure. This was a criminal act that any lessor organization would have been brought up on these charges, but the justice dept couldn't prosecute HSBC officers due to the reach of the bank's investments, as it would greatly affect the world's economy.

Paid a fine with money stolen and extorted from the common people.

:2 cents:

Just the drug related money transfers were over 7 billion. That doesn't account for the dealings with Iran and from the way that article is worded it's not even clear if that was the entire amount transferred via their Mexican operation. They also talk about $60 trillion in transactions and 17,000 accounts flagged as potentially suspicious, later in the article, so who knows how much these guys were laundering.


"Despite repeated urgings from federal officials to strengthen protections in its vast Mexican business, HSBC instead viewed the country from 2000 to 2009 as low-risk for money laundering, the Senate report found. Even after HSBC’s Mexican operation transferred more than $7 billion to the United States — a volume that law enforcement officials said had to be “illegal drug proceeds” — lax controls remained."

"Regulators have also vowed to improve. The Congressional hearings exposed weaknesses at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the national bank regulator. In 2010, the regulator found that HSBC had severe deficiencies in its anti-money laundering controls, including $60 trillion in transactions and 17,000 accounts flagged as potentially suspicious, activities that were not reviewed. Despite the findings, the regulator did not fine the bank."

So again I ask you. You say that the US authorities didn't go far enough. This is a British Bank. Why didn't the UK authorities even file charges or fine the bank? For that matter, this bank has offices in almost every country on the planet, why did NO OTHER COUNTRY file charges or fine them? Where are your critiques of the complete and utter lack of action on the part of every government in which they have an office?








(psssst.... the answer is that NO other country has such strict AML regulations and reporting requirements as the US government.)




.:2 cents:

So the US is against money laundering by criminal organizations and countries that are being sanctioned and that's a bad thing? You think it's ok to just let a known drug cartel to just do business as usual and have access to easy banking?

No.




My point is that you are lambasting the US government, and "American Justice", for only fining this bank, and that they are letting them off easy, when meanwhile the UK and all the other countries where this bank is located have done absolutely nothing at all. In fact they don't even have banking reporting regulations that control this behavior. Since money laundering is such a big deal for you, why aren't you asking where the UK government is in terms of going after a bank that is a registered UK bank? Or Any other country where they have charters? Why aren't THEY fining HSBC? Shouldn't you be happy that the US government is at least fining them, when all other governments are doing nothing at all? You say that they "buy a get out of jail card" in the US, for 1.9 billion dollars.... meanwhile in their home country of the UK, that card cost them absolutely nothing at all.





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Because I'm not a UK citizen.. Why are you going overboard with other countries not doing something as an excuse for the US that did, going lax on the criminal prosecution?

It's like saying it's the UK's fault for illegal immigration into the US and that the UK should have stricter laws on illegal immigration inside the US.

The only involvement the UK has in this matter is the bank was British owned. That has little to nothing to do with anything as long as they operate offices inside the US then they must abide by US laws while doing dealings via their US offices. It matters little who owns them they still have to follow US laws while operating in this country.

If they sent their drug laundered money directly to the UK then this probably wouldn't of been a problem as nothing the US could do about it. However they didn't, they tried to launder the money inside the US.

Get the picture yet? :error

Their holdings are over $2.637 trillion.so 1.9 billion is pocket change. Shit like this is why I laugh when people say Obama is against big business. lol

Yea, I know just the amount that they are saying was laundered for the drug cartels was over 700 billion. 1.9b is not even 1% of that amount. It seems that 7 billion figure I posted about was a single or a small amount of the overall transactions.

I still have yet to see any figures on the amounts they laundered for Iran and the other countries listed, other than the reported $340 million dollar transaction. Meaning who knows how much money we are taking with that.

BTW, putting this in terms of how the US would treat an individual.. if a normal person gets caught on the business end of drug dealings then all their assets are forfeited. Their house & money what ever the govt can track back to that drug money is taken.

Meanwhile if you are a big bank, you don't even pay a 1% fine nor even get a slap on the wrist.

Laundering money does not mean that a bank keeps the money. When a bank accepts a deposit from someone, then that depositor sends that money on to another institution, and perhaps on to another one, that money then acquires a legitimate source for eventual permanent deposit or withdrawal somewhere. The bank makes their money from fees charged for moving the money. This is a very small percentage. The bank didn't keep the 700 bn. Even if they had, the government would have frozen and seized those accounts as soon as there was evidence of criminal activity at the source of the funds.

Also, the reason why no one is going to jail is probably because no one had any proof that the bank knew where the money was coming from. The way that the US sets up it's reporting, due diligence, and source of funds requirements is very strict, and the bank may have violated those by not doing ENOUGH SOF diligence, but I'm sure that a drug dealer didn't walk into the bank and say, "Hey, I have this big bag full of drug money for you." The big dealers have lawyers and accountants that set up all kinds of fake corporations and business accounts in order to make the money look legit to the bank. The issue for the bank is that they must adhere to much higher standards in the US, as far as being suspicious of every large transaction, (They must file a Suspicious Activity Report for EVERY wire over 10k, for example), and sometimes the banks are not suspicious enough to satisfy those requirements. Thus the fine against the bank.

I'm not defending the banks actions here, I'm simply telling you what goes on, since banking is my business.


.:2 cents:



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I understand that the money isn't the bank's money. It's just the middle man that is making the transaction. However you don't think they made more than 1% profit holding that money?

That 1.9 bil isn't even .5% of just the drug money transactions, meaning they have still most likely profited by a large amount from this money.

As far as proof, yes there was proof. In 2010 HSBC was warned that they were dealing in drug money and it needed to be stopped but they were not fined at that time. HSBC continued to deal in that money so two years later they have been fined.

This means yes they did know they were partaking in criminal actions.

Fist of all,if it was just a direct series of transactions over time,then no, they did not make anywhere close to 1% on the money. At most they could use the funds to add to their books as temporary tier one capital.

The wording of the article is deliberately misleading as regards to the "warning". If the government had any evidence at all, then forfiture laws would have kicked in at the time and the accounts would have been frozen. When i owned a check 21 processing company, the bank recieved a report that there was something potentially suspicious about processing for adult by the government. The government then investigated and there was no evidence. If the bank had stopped doing business with us at the "warning" of potentially suspiciuos activity, a lot of webmasters would not have gotten paid.

The fact is that a bank get many of these warnings, of a variuos nature and level, on a daily basis. I know that many of the webmasters here have had their transactions, even simple wires, flagged as potential suspicious, even though your bank does not tell you about it.




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Sorry about typos. I'm on a mobile






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