News

If ever there's an example for why we need new ways of holding corporations accountable for their abuses, the HSBC case is it. We've been rightly focused on Walmart's abuses of workers worldwide recently, but we wanted to take a moment to point out what happened with HSBC today.

Here's CBS story, 'Drug Cartels' Bank' Sees No Arrests:

It's a case that has everything -- everything accept an arrest. That struck some as odd, because in 80 pages of court documents, the bank admits to almost going out of its way to act as a financial clearing house for international pariahs and drug dealers.[...]

Notre Dame professor Jimmy Gurule, who investigated money-laundering cases for the Treasury Department, said: "We're not talking about mere negligence. We're talking about a criminal scheme that was adopted as a policy of HSBC that involved looking the other way in regard to suspicious transactions involving money laundering."

Some would say that the message is, if you break all the laws you can, until you get caught, you may have to pay a lot of money, but you're not gonna go to jail.

Yeah, that's pretty much the message. This wasn't some little oversight slip. HSBC allowed drug dealers to deposit boxes of cash designed specially to fit into the teller windows. They instructed Iran on how to conceal hundreds of millions in transactions. So, what's the reason for no prosecutions?

As for the lack of criminal prosecutions, the feds said that they never found one bank official, or any collection of bank officials acting together, that were doing this on purpose. They painted a picture of a disorganized bank that was collecting all these fees either not knowing, or not wanting to know where it all came from.

So, you know, if you ever get in trouble, just do the ol' "I wasn't doing that on purpose" line on the police. I don't think that'll get you too far. But in the world of corporate activity, that's enough to get you off with a fine ... it's time for a new approach.