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The Worship of the Bull God Apis, by a follower of Filippino Lippi, National Gallery of Art
The utterly incompetent prosecutors at the Department of Justice politely decline to indict HBSC or any of its present or former employees. Because, you know, things like this just happen and besides some of the responsible people don’t live here, and some of them got fired and others lost their bonuses, which is punishment enough. And anyway, we can’t indict unless we find evidence that someone specifically intended to aid money laundering. Or, as the simpering Lanny Breuer puts it:
“As bad as HSBC’s conduct was, this is not a case where the HSBC people intended — intended — to create money laundering,” he said. “They did not have the controls in place that they needed.”
One of the relevant statutes, 18 USC §1956, can be found here. In short, it’s a crime
“…knowing that the property involved in a financial transaction represents the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, [to] conduct or attempt to conduct such a financial transaction which in fact involves the proceeds of specified unlawful activity [and]
…
(B) knowing that the transaction is designed in whole or in part—
(i) to conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of specified unlawful activity; [grammatical changes to make readable.]
…
As used in this section—
(1) the term “knowing that the property involved in a financial transaction represents the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity” means that the person knew the property involved in the transaction represented proceeds from some form, though not necessarily which form, of activity that constitutes a felony under State, Federal, or foreign law, regardless of whether or not such activity is specified in paragraph (7);
…
(f) There is extraterritorial jurisdiction over the conduct prohibited by this section if—
(1) the conduct is by a United States citizen or, in the case of a non-United States citizen, the conduct occurs in part in the United States; and
(2) the transaction or series of related transactions involves funds or monetary instruments of a value exceeding $10,000.
Here’s an example of what HBSC and its employees did, taken from the Statement of Facts attached to the Deferred Prosecution Agreement (thanks, USA Today).
… [D]rug traffickers were depositing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bulk U.S. currency each day into HSBC Mexico accounts. In order to efficiently move this volume of cash through the teller windows at HSBC Mexico branches, drug traffickers designed specially shaped boxes that fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows. The drug traffickers would send numerous boxes filled with cash through the teller windows for deposit into HSBC Mexico accounts. After the cash was deposited in the accounts, peso brokers then wire transferred the U.S. dollars to various exporters located in New York City and other locations throughout the United States to purchase goods for Colombian businesses. The U.S. exporters then sent the goods directly to the businesses in Colombia.
HBSC admits that this is true in the Deferred Prosecution Agreement. Indicting the people who did this is apparently asking too much of these incompetent prosecutors. Here’s a clip of Lanny Breuer explaining (at about the 1:15 minute mark) that this agreement that no one is criminally liable is really a triumph of the prosecutorial art.
The reporters who go to press conferences like Breuer’s don’t know enough to ask Breuer and his crowd of incompetents which part of the statute they can’t prove. And why they can’t extradite and try anyone in any other country who was involved. The Statement of Facts is full of similar stories and identifies the kinds of people subject to indictment. And I bet the junior criminals would rat out their superiors in a heartbeat.
Breuer hides his bank love behind a statement of facts drafted to make it look like the only problems with this criminal money laundering business were mere negligent administrative screw-ups, and that’s nothing, now is it, Lanny? The clown prosecutors can’t imagine that a bunch of people thought they could make a huge pile of money laundering cash for drug cartels, terrorists and other scum of the earth. Now that they have slapped HSBC on the wrist, Lanny and his posse of lawyers who passed the bar on their third try can get back to work prosecuting pot smokers.
Knowing that his legal rationalizations are stupidly false, Breuer seeks the refuge of neoliberal apparatchiks: think of the jobs! Indicting this nest of rattlesnakes would lead to shutting down its US operations, costing jobs and disrupting the economy. That isn’t true either. Remember Riggs Bank? When it got caught doing a lot of the same stuff, it got clobbered, and shut down the criminal operation. The rest was absorbed into another bank. Why shouldn’t that happen to HSBC? Why shouldn’t we shut down their US operations?
The Obama administration regularly sacrifices the rule of law in adoration ceremonies to the Baals of the Financial Sector. The smoke rises to the heights proving their devotion, as the bag boys rush into the sacristy with some of that blessed money.
46 Comments
What the hell do you expect from a country where even those on the “Left” worship the gods of capitalism above all else ?
Where any talk of trashing it is considered sacrilege and treason.
While it might be a little late in the game to bring this small, insignificant fact to anyone’s attention, but:
Money might not be the most important thing in the world, but it sure beats the hell out of anything in second place.
Money makes the world of man go around.
You can hate it, but it’s a fact jack.
Over and out from planet reality.
Sigh…but you cannot eat money and it will not save you when in a predicament.
But go on and kneel before it if you must. Sacrifice you soul to it and those of the children as well.
Life, doremus35, is the most important thing in the world … sentient beings who do not care to understand, will not be around very long … however much they “believe” that their tenure assured.
Another most excellent post, masaccio, thank you.
Recommended to the consideration of everyone at FDL, but most especially to the attention of those who “believe” that money is all that matters … and that “this” should not be a democracy … but a “business”.
(Help me now, with my silver and gold, children cannot eat it and it will not keep out the cold …)
DW
“Sigh…but you cannot eat money and it will not save you when in a predicament.”
Au contraire:
Try eating without it.
Try to get medical care without it.
Try putting a roof over your children’s heads without it.
Try to send your kids to college without it.
I do not worship money, but accept the way the world works.
It’s called reality and yes indeed it is a bitch/bastard when you get right down to it.
“Life, doremus35, is the most important thing in the world …”
Yes, your statement is absolutely true.
And yet, I would ask you if life in this society is possible without money, or shall we refine that by saying ‘a medium of exchange’?
I don’t like it, but accept it as a given.
Once more…The system in NOT broken. The regulatory apparatus is NOT incompetent.
It all works as designed.
AKA Mammon
Obama’s failure to direct the DOJ to proceed against all criminal activity by the guilty banksters is something I will never forgive him for. My disappointment is immeasurable.
I think Obama was bought and paid for by the banksters. That would explain how, exactly, he outspent Romney.
I may be wrong. But I don’t think so.
THAT sir, scares me to death.
“Incompetent prosecutors at the Department of Justice”? They’re not incompetents, they’re whores. Get your labels straight.
Did you vote for him in November NCG?
Hey, if you worship Grover Norquist, what can you expect?
Not one word about the solution: taxes on the financial sector to fund 10,000 lawyers, accountants, investigators in the SEC, or perhaps 50,000 people to investigate and prosecute cases.
If criminal action were seriously threatened, HBSC would easily respond with 5000 lawyers and staff which would delay any action for a decade.
And if a trial were to take place, it would involve six months of testimony before a jury and no real verdict.
Unless you can lay out a criminal case in simple terms in front of a jury that makes it clear that criminal intent was behind illegal acts, the law is with the defendants.
Nope. Jill Stein.
And I won’t vote for him again, ever.
OTOH, many defendants plead to a lessor charge to avoid the trouble and expense of a trial. Most of the Enron crooks did. 16 went to jail. Only real trial was Jeff Skilling. The “jury of his peers” found him guilty. I think t hey deliberated 24 minutes. That included lunch.
Food, housing and medical care can indeed be found without using money. The claim otherwise is a limited Western view.
If this is the reasoning that guides you, you are already lost.
I think the attys at the DOJ just do what they’re told by their bosses. That being the AG and the POTUS.
After all you know what they say, “The Doritos stop here.”
Hubby used to have a small retail business; he took crap Every Time he walked into the bank to make a deposit (to his BUSINESS ACCOUNT), and none was over several thousand dollars.
For all the people rotting in jails and prisons for minor, sometimes misdemeanors, illegal drug infractions and other charges brought by overzealous prosecutors this is yet another travesty. The judicial system is part and parcel to a truly rotten, inept and corrupt security state. These institutions are the problem, period. They are in deep need of detox and rehab. And, I truly believe there is a deep well of righteous anger to be tapped from both the left and the right on these issues. Certainly, the middle wouldn’t stand in the way. So, who is, exactly?
One of the galling things about the clip I linked is that the reporter doesn’t know enough to challenge the simpering Lanny Breuer. If people could directly ask Breuer which part of the case he couldn’t make, it would reveal that this settlement is a scam.
That statement of facts indicts the failures of the banking regulators as much as the bankers at HSBC. Where the hell were they, when HSBC was failing to abide by their 2004 agreement when these things first emerged? (See paragraph 8 and following in the Statement of Facts)
The word “failure” appears quite often in that Statement, but never with regard to the FRBNY for their pre-2004 oversight of HSBC or OCC for their oversight after that point.
Regulatory Capture, anyone?
Life, DW, is not sustainable without wherewithal, i.e., money that purchases. Having been poor all my adult life, I may have a better grasp of the necessity of money than people who can afford to be more off hand. Money is an abiding concern and worry for people in my “bracket.” I would LOVE to have more of it. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. About $70,000 a year would be perfect, if anyone can arrange that.
Hummm…I get by just fine on half that and know people who get by on half of that.
But as for being poor. After my father passed – my family me, my two brothers, two sisters and my mother – were poor as church mice.
We caught fish and bought unlabeled cans at the supermarket and chicken necks and backs. Sometimes passing on breakfast and/or lunch.
Are you sure we have a department of justice. My congressman has been waiting since August for a response from them.
Once rule of money replaces rule of law in any country, that country is well on it’s way to becoming another Zaire, or Uganda. Absolutely no racial inference intended.
George Carlin: The Owners
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PkWf9M3rUw
They sure do not have any problem squeezing the balls of Julian Assange of Wikileak for allegedly ripping a condom. Apparently, when the bankers screw the whole world, it is no where as serious a crime as when a man (Julian Assange) humps someone consensually.
In the end President Obama is the enabler of all such corruption because, after all, he is the one who appointed all these crooks and liars.
Good for you. I don’t want to live that way. Did you? What is this, a masochists community? The “Poverty Finds Andy Hardy” movie? Oh, wow, let’s see how meanly we can live! Gosh, this is fun!
I “get by” on less than $13,000 a year, if this is a contest.
it’s a community of people who have higher personal standards than worshiping some golden idol.
BINGO !
The impression I get from some of the commenters here is that they don’t care that our economic system is designed to fuck everyone.
They are simply pissed that they are the fuckees rather than the fuckers. That they are not getting a bigger piece of the action. And as such maybe they should frequent a different blog. Say Red State or Little Green Footballs.
Huh. Hasn’t worked that way with petty criminals I’ve known. Not at all.
You will love this. Where I live they have now created a separate clerks office to handle the foreclosure cases, because the regular clerks office was swamped.
I stopped in there today tory try to pick up a copy of a order and there clerk was chewing the fat with some other lawyer. They were talking about this DPA, and how giving it WITHOUT requiring the bank to break up was insane.
The banksters are beginning to lose the court clerks, who are the heart and soul of the system.
This is even better than opening the eyes of judges. Clerks really have more to do with outcomes in many instances than judges do. If the clerks have turned anti banks, ….. Well, let’s just say I am feeling like I got an early Xmas present. Doesn’t hurt that the order was a win for my side, either
This is what is galling and what I think holds the seeds of the security state’s failure. Truth is these days, I consider following the law optional, a purely practical matter. To the extent I follow any law I don’t like, I do so just enough not to get caught. (Morality and ethics keep me from harmfully antisocial behavior.)This is what I’ve learned from watching how our DoJ handles financial crimes. I don’t think I’m unique though many like-minded others may not have articulated this to themselves. I think those people’s righteous anger is going to be vented explosively when/if the security state turns to breaking its back to throw them in jail for pot or passing bad checks or whatever while it also gives white collar criminals a free pass in broad daylight.
In the case of the commodity market manipulation that’s robbing almost all of us blind, there are very few fuckers and all the rest of us are fuckees. Every time we go to the grocery store or buy a gallon of gas, we pay the fuckers. The amount of money they’ve collected from the fuckees is truly astounding. It’s enough to blind almost everyone of our politicians to the fact, “What commodity market manipulation, I don’t see no commodity market manipulation”, while our standard of living goes down each year.
They’ve been doing it for centuries
Leave out the religion and family references, and this next paragraph sounds like it was lifted directly from an Alan Greenspan interview
Link
As was pointed out earlier, working as designed. Or if you prefer, it’s not a bug – it’s a feature.
Re: Alan Greenspan, I mean he’d be pro mythology
One can have money without capitalism; money existed long before capitalism did. I find your, and others’, acceptance of capitalism as an unavoidable, unchangeable reality defeatist, naive, and suicidal for the survival of the human species if not the biosphere itself.
Capitalism’s ONLY goal is to accrue more capital. It is a dangerously insane illusion which must be destroyed before it destroys us.
We can do better than this.
How many times have you seen people fall helpless victim to some brutal dictator and think how fortunate you were to be in the good old USA. Do you feel as fortunate now? Is there any difference between a brutal dictator, and being victimized by the power of the almighty dollar?
Let’s hope this represents a really positive trend!!
You’re kidding, right ?
Since WWIISince the formation of this country, a large number – if most – were installed and supported by this country. America positively LOVES dictators.Capitalism is an economic “game”, liberalarts, that people “play”, it is NOT the only economic system available to human beings. In human terms, all human societies have “economic systems” and the essential function of any and ALL economic systems is to make available to the members of the society which embraces or follows ANY economic system is the distribution of those resources necessary to human life, to existence. When a system such as capitalism loses sight of that primary function, looses sight of the fact that human life depends and MUST depend upon the planet, upon the resources the planet provides, when such a system perverts existence into the mad scramble for “money” when that “money” is not tied to the production of “wealth”, wealth being defined ONLY as the process by which resources come to be useful, other wise known as “work” … when those who may command the largest amounts of money while contributing nothing meaningful TO the process, then both life and the planet are exploited … and if the exploitation goes on long enough and dispossesses enough human beings from meaningful and worthwhile endeavor, as well as destroying the capacity of earth to support human life, then such a system is bound for failure, for dramatic failure, from overuse of food or energy resources, say overfishing, which may lead those societies who depend primarily upon fishing to famine, or if the soil is depleted by poor farming practices famine (as in the Irish potato famine) or that too many trees are cut, leading to desertification, and so on … we now face, as a species, for many reasons the possibility of our own demise, our own extinction, from pollution of the environment, the air, the water, the soil, and so on even to the overuse of antibiotics … and ALL of these dangers are greed-driven, they are neither necessary nor excusable.
And greed is simply the situation where money, a means of “exchange”, becomes more important than reason. I do NOT suggest that the means of exchange are inherently bad, “money” by itself, is just a “promise” of value … but when acquiring it is ALL that “matters” and HOW it is acquired does not, then all balance is lost and the rule of law is replaced by the rule of economic AND political tyranny. And that, liberalarts, is precisely and exactly the spot in which ALL of us now find ourselves and, seemingly … we lack both imagination and courage sufficient to move beyond that impasse.
Until we may imagine and find the courage to develop an economic system which far better and more equitably distributes the resources necessary to life among all human beings, so long as we permit the few to own the productive capacity of our collective genius, just so long will we be enslaved in a system and a society which courts monumental disaster for the most selfish and small-minded of “purposes”.
Frankly, all of our histories are equally long, we share the same ancestors, the same planet, and I hold that we are all, therefore, equally entitled to the resources necessary to life, even those yet unborn … a thousand, two thousand … ten thousand years to the future, whereas we now face a greedy few who have NO compunctions about destroying everything to satisfy their own small minded, tiny hearted, self-serving, and abysmally frightened, and thoroughly pathetic ways.
How much is “enough”?
I would imagine that you have a clear idea about that, as do most human beings … it is the ones, the few who do not understand what “enough” is, that do not grasp the meaning or purpose of “money” … any more than they grasp the meaning, value, and worth of life.
DW
That is superb news, Cynthia, just the very kind I am hoping to hear.
When the county court clerks and the county recorders of deeds get it … when they understand … then the banks had best realize that the jig is well and truly up.
DW
The clerks are where the rubber meets the road.
What stopped the effort to trash Minnesota’s voting system with a constitutional amendment was when the county elections officials — the people who have to enact and enforce the rules and laws — saw how much this would cost local governments, both in terms of tax dollars and extra hassle, just so the Republicans could keep certain groups of Democratic-leaning voters from voting. Various rural counties would have had to forego plowing roads or hiring cops or fixing up the county nursing home, just to pay for this unfunded mandate that wouldn’t have solved the nonexistent problem for which it was touted as a fix.