Title: Re: Utt-Ohh, The ‘Russian Collusion’ Trial Is On!!!
Post by The Mechanic on May 12th, 2018 at 9:06pm
Quote:Policies Prevented Catching Crooks: Even in the rare instance where money laundering controls were in place, inadequate follow-up measures undermined any intervention.
The US division of HSBC allowed thousands of suspicious accounts to remain open after they were flagged for closure. “Know your customer” practices were virtually nonexistent, which allowed bad actors to get around things like Iranian sanctions and Patriot Act protections, which in turn was aggravated by bank employees doing things like deleting information about the country of origin on deposits from places like Iran.
Large-scale warnings, such as the migration of billions of US dollars in cash deposits into HSBC Mexico, went unnoticed because the bank apparently had no system in place to monitor such activity.
To say all of this was “extremely reckless” would be an understatement—it’s inconceivable that the bank’s employees and executives didn’t know what was happening at the time.
“Ramrod” Mueller to the Rescue
What did Mueller do to aggressively investigate and shut down this massive “foreign influence” involving our country’s drug epidemic and threat of terrorism? Basically nothing.
No bank executives or employees were arrested or jailed. People have spent more time in jail for smoking a joint than any HSBC executive or employee did for facilitating drug cartel business and terrorist financing.
On October 17, 2010, the Treasury Department issued “cease and desist” letter to HSBC for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. This was followed by a Senate subcommittee investigation, which provided a comprehensive report and took hearing testimony on July 17, 2012.
In what appeared to be prepared remarks, one bank compliance executive resigned at the hearing, while another executive indicated HSBC “did our best” in Mexico.
With nearly all of the investigation already completed by the Senate and already in the public eye, the Department of Justice was finally forced to file a four-count felony indictment against defendant HSBC on December 11, 2012, which included three felony counts relating to grossly inadequate anti-money laundering practices and one count for violation of the Trading With The Enemy Act.
On the same day, and over the objections of career DOJ prosecutors, then-AG Holder allowed HSBC to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement, under which the charges would be dropped if the bank stayed out of trouble for 5 years and paid a “record fine” consisting of $1.256 billion in forfeited assets and an additional $665 million in civil penalties. Added together, the punishment totaled approximately 9% of one year’s profits for HSBC’s worldwide operations, which amounted to a whopping $21.9 billion in 2011 alone.
Also the same day, then-US Attorney Loretta Lynch led a press conference alleging that (1) an alphabet soup of federal agencies had conducted a serious investigation and (2) the “record fine” was somehow adequate punishment.
Notably, “ramrod straight” Mueller and Holder were not present, despite the obvious national importance of the case.
The DOJ’s press release (echoed by the FBI, which simply re-posted DOJ’s release) bragged about the “heavy price” of the fine being imposed.
Despite the “heavy price” paid for its rampant criminal behavior, HSBC was somehow able to sponsor the star-studded 2014 Clinton Global Initiative. (Perhaps not coincidentally, the Clinton Foundation also received up to $81,000,000 in donations from HSBC’s illustrious group of account holders.)
But not everyone bought into Lynch’s sales pitch. Even CBS News seemed suspicious of the deal, which was obviously disproportionate to the criminal conduct involved:
While a US citizen sending money to terrorists can result in a 20-year prison sentence, and many US citizens have been sentenced to decades in prison for even marijuana-related crimes, the bank’s executives and employees never spent one day in jail for their roles in assisting terrorist-connected nations and Mexican drug cartels to do business in the United States—an example of the “two systems” of justice than many Americans believe exist between the elites and regular citizens.
If the FBI uses search warrants, recorded transactions, confidential informants, wiretaps, GPS tracking, and conducts a broad sweep of witness interviews in cases involving drug trafficking and terrorism in other cases, why wouldn’t Mueller have done the same to build a case here? Mueller’s absence in the HSBC case says as much about the cover-up as when Holder refused to prosecute over the objections of career prosecutors.
James Comey Joins HSBC’s Board of Directors: Less than two months after the 2012 deferred prosecution agreement, HSBC appointed James Comey to its Board of Directors as head of the Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee.
ComeyHSBC
When he joined HSBC, Comey left a job working as general counsel for Bridgewater Associates hedge fund, where he earned over $6.6 million per year, for a position at a disgraced criminal bank one recently charged with laundering El Chapo’s money that paid under $200,000 per year (approximately three percent of his salary at Bridgewater). It’s hard to say why anyone would take that job, and that pay cut, unless there was some additional incentive. |
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