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HSBC Avoids All Prosecution, Supposedly To Prevent New Bank Panic
December 12, 2012 • 9:04AM

The British empire's drug bank Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), the biggest universal bank in Europe and the bank Lyndon LaRouche's movement fought a sustained battle to keep out of the United States in the 1970s, has been allowed by the Obama Administration to keep its U.S. banking license, despite wholesale and serious violations of U.S. laws. HSBC was found by a Senate committee earlier this year to have been the favored money-laundering bank of the murderous Mexican drugs cartels, and the preferred correspondent bank of Saudi terrorist financiers.

The bank today agreed with U.S. regulators and the Obama Department of Justice to pay a fine of $1.92 billion for the drug- and terror-money laundering crimes, found by Senate investigation to be on the order of $10 billion/year from 2002-09. It piously claimed, in announcing the settlement, that it was now "a different organization than in those years." While a large rap on the knuckles, the settlement gets HSBC a "deferred prosecution" agreement from the DoJ (i.e., no prosecution); the end of a criminal investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney's office; and it keeps its banking license in the United States. Neither the bank holding company nor any officers or executives will be prosecuted for the crimes.

The regulators and prosecutors, in a press conference in New York City today, defended the Obama Administration decision by saying that prosecuting HSBC or lifting its banking license "would have had too much collateral damage." In other words, the threat of bank panic was again the excuse for allowing the banksters to avoid any consequences for their speculations and crimes.

Thus the Levin-Coburn Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee's findings and referrals for prosecution are ignored once again by Obama and the DoJ, as in the case of Goldman Sachs' massive securities fraud. Senator Levin, however, made no criticism of the settlement, saying in a statement that it "sent a powerful wake-up call to multinational banks."

Veteran expert in money-laundering Jack Blum, on the other hand, said, "These people managed to cross virtually every line that could be crossed. It was an astonishing amount of criminal behavior. I'd say this is a signal to other banks that if you do this kind of stuff you'll get a parking ticket. You pay the fine, and you move on. And that's unacceptable."

London-based HSBC may settle soon for additional fines in the UK. Ironically, the bank's stock shares have increased 31% in price in the year since "investors" found out it was again (still) into serious drugs and crime.


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