HSBC Narco-Bank: Too big to fail, too big to go to jail

Daniel Hopsicker reports for Mad Cow Morning News:

The big news in the US Senate’s Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigation’s 340-page report released last week on drug money-laundering by London’s HSBC Bank, the world’s 4th largest, is the answer to the question:

Is there a bigger Drug Lord in the world than Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel Honcho Shorty (El Chapo) Guzman?

Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is yes. His job's as important at Shorty Guzman's, even if he doesn't get the same kind of press. But first, a quick peek at how and why the Senate Report made one thing— as Richard Nixon used to say—perfectly clear:

Crime pays. At least if you’re a banker.

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"'Low-risk' means don't worry about the goddam drug money, got it?"

HSBC's chief executive in Mexico, Luis Pena, echoed what bank officials told Senator Levin’s Senate Committee last week. He said the bank recognized its mistakes and that the issue was now settled after the fine, the biggest-ever handed out to a bank in Mexico. "The case is concluded," Pena told Mexican reporters. "As I say, this was about serious administrative faults."

No it wasn’t. It’s about a criminal enterprise acting around the globe with impunity.

During the middle of the most conspicuous drug war in world history in Mexico, HSBC Bank labeled the bank’s transaction in that bedeviled country “low-risk,” meaning there was very little chance the enormous sums the bank was forwarding from Mexico to the US—as much as $9 billion in just a few years—were drug money.

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