You know, based on the language used and the names alone, for a moment there I thought that was some* Black Adder *or Yes, Minister! bit I hadn’t seen yet. Fuck me.
That being said I can see how, barring such jaw-dropping self-incriminating tidbits, it would be hard to conclusively prove anyone in the bank was knowingly, wilfully laundering cartel or terrorist money. “Oh, come on” doesn’t cut it in court, I’m afraid. Just following [del]orders[/del]memos, just doing the math, just compounding the interest, right ? A client’s a client’s a client. Long as it’s all strictly legal, it’s all ethical… right ?
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
They are ineffectual now but that’s going to change
[/QUOTE]
The Times had an extensive discussion of why there were no criminal charges. IIRC, it would have meant that the bank would not be allowed to do business in many areas, and a bank that big collapsing would have done more harm than good. (No matter how much we’d enjoy the sight.) For banks these days $1.5 billion off the bottom line is nothing to sneeze at.
BTW, the indictments weren’t dropped, just delayed. If the bank is caught doing anything like this again, they get filed, and the bank dies. (If convicted, but apparently the evidence is pretty good.)
"The banks’ laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC’s Mexican branches and “deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows.”
This bears repeating: in order to more efficiently move as much illegal money as possible into the “legitimate” banking institution HSBC, drug dealers specifically designed boxes to fit through the bank’s teller windows"
