What to do? Bank Drug Money Laundering & Sanction Breaking

[revelarts]

HSBC bank admitted to laundering $881 million from Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

How much drug money does a bank have to launder before we consider shutting them down?
How many sanctions do they have to violate before we consider shutting them down?

Published on Mar 7, 2013 youtube
From Sen. Elizabeth Warren YouTube Channel 03/07/2013.
Senator Elizabeth Warren's Q&A at the March 7, 2013 Banking Committee hearing entitled
"Patterns of Abuse: Assessing Bank Secrecy Act Compliance and Enforcement." Witnesses were: David Cohen, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, United States Department of the Treasury; Thomas Curry, Comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; and Jerome H. Powell, Governor, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. HSBC admitted to laundering $881 million from Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Banking Committee member Warren, asked the Treasury Department: How much drug money does a bank have to launder before we consider shutting them down?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZzPIYWnFY (http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2015/01/cia-drug-dealing-hsbc-money-laundering.html)

(http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2015/01/cia-drug-dealing-hsbc-money-laundering.html)

These banks consistently get caught laundering money for drug cartels, but all that ever happens is a fine, which is a tiny portion of the total profits being pulled in by these banks. Why would they stop doing this, if the cost of doing this business with drug cartels is a drop in the bucket of profits?
Also the Bank admitted to violating sanctions against Iran, Libya, Cuba, Burma and the Sudan to make money despite the known gov't restrictions.

the Senator stated"
"...caught money laundering eight hundred in eighty one million dollars that we know of for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels and also admitted to violating our sanctions four a Iran, Libya, Cuba, Burma and the Sudan and that's not just one time it wasn't like a mistake they did it over and over and over again across a period of years and they were caught doing it, warned not to do it And kept right on doing it an evidently making profits to doing it now HSBC paid a fine But no one went to trial
no was banned from banking and
no movement was made to ban or curtail HSBC from working in the U.S..."


Any outrage against these law breaker? why are they being coddled by the administrations?
Any outrage over the sanction breaking? Aren't the banks putting lives at risk and "traitors" here?

No bankers ever goes to jail and no large bank is ever dismantled, taken over, or seized for doing these illegal things. But if an average person knowingly rents a house to a guy that sells weed or coke out of it he'd face jail as a criminal accomplice. If they did the same thing over and over they may be in jail for life. You better believe there'd be no "warnings" not to do it again or fines that amount to 5 weeks of your other rental income.

Concerning sanction breaking:
"Penalties for violating US sanctions vary widely and are dependent upon a number of factors. Penalties range from issuance of a "cautionary letter" to transaction-based civil penalties, and, if the violation is willful, to referral to the US Department of Justice for criminal prosecution with the prospect of a $1 million fine and up to 20 years imprisonment."

Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtou...l-we-tolerate/ (http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2012/12/12/final-thought-on-hsbc-settlement-how-much-bad-behavior-will-we-tolerate/)
"What’s a bank got to do to get into some real trouble around here?"

[revelarts]

Criminal Charges Against Banks Risk Sparking Crisis

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-01/criminal-charges-against-banks-risk-sparking-crisis


As U.S. Justice Department prosecutors angle to bring the first criminal charges against global banks since the financial crisis, they’ll have to stare down warnings of uncontainable collateral damage.
The 2002 collapse of Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm indicted in the Enron scandal, “should be a lesson” for prosecutors, Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “Don’t play with matches.”
Stung by lawmakers’ criticism that multibillion-dollar settlements have done too little to punish Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis, prosecutors are considering indictments in probes of Credit Suisse Group AG and BNP Paribas SA, a person familiar with the matter said. Even after talking with financial regulators about ways to mitigate damage -- such as ensuring banks keep charters -- prosecutors might not fully understand consequences for the market, according to industry lawyers and bankers who are following the case.
Bank clients -- including trustees, fiduciaries and pension funds -- could be forced to cut ties with a financial institution labeled a criminal enterprise, the lawyers and bankers said, asking not to be named because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly. Counterparties also might think twice before entering into billion-dollar transactions with such firms. Damaging a bank’s business could lead to broader fallout across the financial industry, just as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse in 2008 prompted investors to withdraw from other firms on concern its exit would set off a wave of losses.

Spook Customers
Criminal action would have to be handled so that any review of a bank’s charter wouldn’t spook customers or revoke a firm’s license, said Gil Schwartz, a partner at Schwartz & Ballen LLP and a former Federal Reserve lawyer.
“The mere threat of requiring a hearing could cause customers to lose confidence in the institution and could cause a run on the bank,” Schwartz said.
The warnings show the resistance prosecutors face in seeking to prove global banks aren’t too big and systemically important to indict. Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, signaled in a March speech that a large financial firm would be charged soon, despite the industry’s bleak predictions of fallout.

‘Nuclear Winter’
“Companies, especially financial institutions, will do almost anything to avoid a tough enforcement action and therefore have a natural and powerful incentive to make prosecutors believe that death or dire consequences await,” he said. “I have heard assertions made with great force and passion that if we take any criminal action, the skies will darken; the oceans will rise; nuclear winter will be upon us; and the world as we know it will end.”
Credit Suisse has been the target since 2011 of a U.S. criminal probe into whether it helped Americans evade taxes. BNP Paribas has been investigated for possible violations of U.S. sanctions barring business with prohibited countries.
Shares of Zurich-based Credit Suisse fell 0.3 percent yesterday to 27.91 francs after news reports on prosecutors’ deliberations. BNP Paribas dropped 3.2 percent to 54.11 euros. The Paris-based firm said it may need to pay much more than the $1.1 billion it set aside for the U.S. sanctions case.
Spokesmen for both firms declined to comment on the prosecutors’ considerations.

Limit Fallout
There are a variety of ways for prosecutors to limit damage from criminal charges. One option would be to force a bank’s subsidiary, rather than the parent company, to enter a guilty plea, said the lawyers and bankers. The Justice Department has gone down that path in settling charges involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials to win business.
“I would expect regulatory discussions with these banks in question will avoid systemic consequences,” said Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in Stanford, California. “I expect the situation to be controlled.”
Many concerns expressed by financial professionals focused on less tangible fallout, such as lost confidence in a firm. Some compared such a situation to Bear Stearns Cos., which was battered by doubts about its strength in 2008, leading to its emergency sale to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Criminal Past
Client psychology also could come into play. For example, even if investment managers aren’t prohibited from working with a bank, they may shy away because they don’t want to explain why they put funds in a firm with a criminal past.
Mindful that the specter of criminal charges helped put financial institutions such as Bank of Credit and Commerce International and Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. out of business, prosecutors in Washington and New York have met with representatives of the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to discuss the regulatory risks of indictments, according to two people briefed on the matter.
In the case of BNP Paribas, New York’s top banking regulator, Benjamin Lawsky, isn’t planning to suspend its license, a person familiar with that matter said earlier this week. Lawsky instead is considering seeking a deal that would terminate some bank employees, claw back pay and temporarily suspend the firm’s ability to transfer money through New York branches on behalf of foreign clients, the person said.

Far-Reaching
Consequences of such a suspension could be far-reaching, because smaller banks around the world rely on the Paris-based lender for dollar-clearing services, lawyers and bankers said.
The Justice Department’s attempt to get the Federal Reserve and OCC involved makes sense, said Samuel Buell, a former Enron Task Force prosecutor who now teaches at Duke University School of Law.
“You can’t do a guilty plea of a systemically important financial institution without first getting the regulators on board a commitment that the conviction won’t put the bank out of business,” he said in an e-mail. “That seems to be going on here, not surprisingly.”
Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas may be serving as guinea pigs to see how criminal charges affect banks, potentially paving the way for such claims against larger U.S. firms when they break laws, said Phillip Phan, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in Baltimore.

‘Test Cases’
“These are test cases,” said Phan. “There’s a pragmatism behind this. You look for a target that’s small enough and that will send a message.”
Prosecuting banks would break with a practice of brokering settlements with companies that are considered integral to the financial system. Previous probes were resolved through so-called non-prosecution and deferred-prosecution agreements, which have been criticized by U.S. lawmakers for failing to hold banks accountable.
“It’s about time,” said Buell, who was part of the prosecution team at the trial of Arthur Andersen, whose indictment put about 85,000 people out of work. “The argument that we can’t have guilty pleas because of debarment provisions that are written into various regulatory codes has always seemed to be a case of the tail wagging the dog.”


"...Client psychology also could come into play. For example, even if investment managers aren’t prohibited from working with a bank, they may shy away because they don’t want to explain why they put funds in a firm with a criminal past.
yes why in the world would someone want to use a past with a criminal past...."
oh really? what a horror?
do people wan't to use a Car repair shop with a criminal past?
do people want to use a Doctor with past of malpractice?
should they be shielded from prosecution because it might hurt their business?
These banks seem insane and blinded in their own corruption.

Real capitalism would mean the banks went out of business and the clients would take their biz else where.