Matt Taibbi: 'Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves The Drug War Is A Joke'
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By Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone
If you've ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you've ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or "drug paraphernalia" in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.
Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who's ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.
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. Tony Montana's henchmen marching dufflebags of cash into the fictional "American City Bank" in Miami was actually more subtle than what the cartels were doing when they washed their cash through one of Britain's most storied financial institutions.
Though this was not stated explicitly, the government's rationale in not pursuing criminal prosecutions against the bank was apparently rooted in concerns that putting executives from a "systemically important institution" in jail for drug laundering would threaten the stability of the financial system. The New York Times put it this way:
Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system.
It doesn't take a genius to see that the reasoning here is beyond flawed. When you decide not to prosecute bankers for billion-dollar crimes connected to drug-dealing and terrorism (some of HSBC's Saudi and Bangladeshi clients had terrorist ties, according to a Senate investigation), it doesn't protect the banking system, it does exactly the opposite. It terrifies investors and depositors everywhere, leaving them with the clear impression that even the most "reputable" banks may in fact be captured institutions whose senior executives are in the employ of (this can't be repeated often enough) murderers and terrorists. Even more shocking, the Justice Department's response to learning about all of this was to do exactly the same thing that the HSBC executives did in the first place to get themselves in trouble – they took money to look the other way.
And not only did they sell out to drug dealers, they sold out cheap. You'll hear bragging this week by the Obama administration that they wrested a record penalty from HSBC, but it's a joke. Some of the penalties involved will literally make you laugh out loud.
This is from Breuer's announcement:
As a result of the government's investigation, HSBC has . . . "clawed back" deferred compensation bonuses given to some of its most senior U.S. anti-money laundering and compliance officers, and agreed to partially defer bonus compensation for its most senior officials during the five-year period of the deferred prosecution agreement.
Wow. So the executives who spent a decade laundering billions of dollars will have to partially defer their bonuses during the five-year deferred prosecution agreement? Are you fucking kidding me? That's the punishment? The government's negotiators couldn't hold firm on forcing HSBC officials to completely wait to receive their ill-gotten bonuses? They had to settle on making them "partially" wait? Every honest prosecutor in America has to be puking his guts out at such bargaining tactics. What was the Justice Department's opening offer – asking executives to restrict their Caribbean vacation time to nine weeks a year?
So you might ask, what's the appropriate financial penalty for a bank in HSBC's position? Exactly how much money should one extract from a firm that has been shamelessly profiting from business with criminals for years and years? Remember, we're talking about a company that has admitted to a smorgasbord of serious banking crimes. If you're the prosecutor, you've got this bank by the balls. So how much money should you take?
How about all of it? How about every last dollar the bank has made since it started its illegal activity? How about you dive into every bank account of every single executive involved in this mess and take every last bonus dollar they've ever earned? Then take their houses, their cars, the paintings they bought at Sotheby's auctions, the clothes in their closets, the loose change in the jars on their kitchen counters, every last freaking thing. Take it all and don't think twice. And then throw them in jail.
Sound harsh? It does, doesn't it? The only problem is, that's exactly what the government does just about every day to ordinary people involved in ordinary drug cases.
It'd be interesting, for instance, to ask the residents of Tenaha, Texas what they think about the HSBC settlement. That's the town where local police routinely pulled over (mostly black) motorists and, whenever they found cash, offered motorists a choice: They could either allow police to seize the money, or face drug and money laundering charges.
Or we could ask Anthony Smelley, the Indiana resident who won $50,000 in a car accident settlement and was carrying about $17K of that in cash in his car when he got pulled over. Cops searched his car and had drug dogs sniff around: The dogs alerted twice. No drugs were found, but police took the money anyway. Even after Smelley produced documentation proving where he got the money from, Putnam County officials tried to keep the money on the grounds that he could have used the cash to buy drugs in the future.
Seriously, that happened. It happens all the time, and even Lanny Breuer's own Justice Deparment gets into the act. In 2010 alone, U.S. Attorneys' offices deposited nearly $1.8 billion into government accounts as a result of forfeiture cases, most of them drug cases. You can see the Justice Department's own statistics right here:
Continue reading at Rolling Stone...
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Matt Taibbi and Eliot Spitzer on HSBC:
Don't skip this clip.
Last week:
Matt Taibbi: 'Moynihan Perfects The Art Of I Can't Recall'
Photos by William Banzai7...
The laundry of HSBC
This money is clean as can be
Banks criminal ways
Shows that crime always pays
Move along, there is nothing to see
The Limerick King
May 10, 2013 at 3:59 PM
Reader Comments (37)
our kids.
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/12/was-the-sandy-hook-hoax-youtube-2516642.html
As far as the caption goes...
If you show me yours, I'll show you mine.
Now where do I collect the prize?
Whatever happened to we are a nation of laws and not men? Hopefully karma will play a role in this administration's destiny. If so, they can all look forward to a tragic fate.
"I can't even look honest, and isn't it great that we don't even have to bother with trying?!"
Eric: " What the f*** do they believe is the outcome of this trial ?"
So, cui bono? Queen lizard's extravagance all of a sudden becomes common pelf and the Mossad loses all dignity. They did it to themselves. They can always revolt and join the party. Save the schools. Art is good. Measure twice, cut once. Think twice, act once. Don't hurt nobody. Ephisians 6:12 is of divine providence, but that was before The Bible was editted by swine.
Dump the Fed.
Eric 'The Holder' Holder was picked to wind down and remain 'holding the bag'' for Bush41's 'Fast and Furious', a vulgar act. So the following caption was inspired,
" Wanna see something funny? I'm about to jump up and take a crap on this table!"
I really don't like this guy.
"And they think we give a shit"!
I don't get it anymore. America used to seem to be a great place, but now is a wallowing, hypocritical, heretical pig. This is the icing on the cake to the downfall of lady liberty. What an absolute fucking joke!
60 trillion is suspicious transactions go "unnoticed" but Spitzer get snooped out by the same freaking bank with three $10,000 transactions to a front company for a call girl service.
So why can't the ndaa be turned around on the same people that designed it? It makes perfect sense to me and would be a step in the right direction especially considering what kind of precedence had just been set with this traitorous ruling!
Caption contest....
"Hey when you get home ask your wife for me how my dick tastes! I told you once you go black you never go back bitch!
The merging of capital and political power is now finalized and evident for all to see. There is no use being surprised by any of it - it's been developing since before Abe Lincoln's presidency, and is now being fine-tuned for psychological consumption. The question remains when will the citizens of this country have enough?
You try to explain the peril of settling for corruption and tyranny, and they just freeze up, stick their tongue out at you, and become participants. We have been advised that the patriotic American public is being prepared for slaughter and exploitation, and we can see the evidence in the FEMA camps and other draconian measures aimed solely at those not servicing the Rothschild obelisk. I suggest we turn the tables and flatten these pieces of shit, and make it impossible to exploit the welfare system. several domestic groups are cooperating in the destruction of the U.S. and these expendable crab-people just go along for the ride.
Luckily for these guilty pigs they are above the law..not so much for the little guy who gets screwed for minor possession and end up sharing a cell with a true hardened criminal.
How in the world this administration is proud of themselves is beyond me. I mean they truly exhibit psychopathic behaviors.
Caption contest "hey i asked my wife how your dick tasted and she wants to invite you over tonight so you can shit on her chest. It's her way of thanking you. I told her it was a bit extreme but she insists it's just as much fun to receive as it is to give. What a great woman i have, right? Just make sure you wear that sparkly g string bedazzled with obombas face. I want to bring our festivities to greater heights!"
Why is that people embrace incorporation so whole-heartedly? The only purpose for incorporation is to limit liability.
Corporations are allowed to exist knowing their only reason for existence is to cheat us? Let's stop cheating each other.
End the corporations. They have no place in natural law.
Eric Holder to Lanny Breuer: "I dare you to pull your balls out during the hearing. What are they gonna do? Fine you?"
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-strikes-again-the-mega-banks-most-devious-scam-yet-20140212
Banks are no longer just financing heavy industry. They are actually buying it up and inventing bigger, bolder and scarier scams than ever
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/02/11/217831/us-drug-czar-calls-for-more-access.html
WASHINGTON - White House drug czar R. Gil Kerlikowske on Tuesday called for making naloxone, a drug that has been highly effective at reversing heroin overdoses, more widely available to emergency-care providers and other first responders.
Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, also urged states and local communities to pass "good Samaritan" laws to provide immunity from criminal prosecution to individuals who call for emergency help during an overdose.
The comments come as focus on the growing number of heroin overdoses has sharpened after the death of Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died Feb. 2. He was found in his New York City apartment with packets of the drug and a needle in his arm.
Heroin was involved in 3,038 overdose deaths in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During a conference call Tuesday with reporters, Kerlikowske said that relying on law enforcement alone wouldn't solve the problem and that the Obama administration was focused on treating addiction and preventing overdoses.
"We are not going to arrest our way out of this drug problem," the former Seattle police chief said. He praised the president's Affordable Care Act for requiring insurance companies to cover substance abuse treatment in the same way they do other chronic diseases.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/22/us-hsbc-bonuses-idUSBREA1L0EH20140222
(Reuters) - HSBC will announce staff bonuses totaling just under 2.4 billion pounds ($4 billion) globally for 2013 and is expected to report a significant rise in pretax profit, Sky News reported on its website on Saturday without citing its sources.
Referring to an unnamed source close to the bank, Sky also said Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver will receive a 1.8 million pound bonus as part of an overall pay deal worth more than 7 million pounds, though this would be less than his previous year pay deal of 7.4 million.
Europe's biggest bank is expected to announce the size of its bonus pool on Monday along with its yearly results. Bonus payments remain a sensitive issue as many Britons still blame banks for the 2008 financial crisis, after which the state was forced to bail out RBS and Lloyds.
Earlier this month Barclays prompted an angry reaction from politicians and labor unions after it increased its bonuses by 13 percent to 2.4 billion pounds, even as it announced plans to axe 12,000 jobs…
...A spokesman at HSBC declined comment.
When I saw that you'd commented on the Taibbi piece, I wrongly assumed your comment would address MT's recent move to First Look Media, where he'll join Glenn Greenwald and others.
Gushing commentary about their moves to FLM within the Alternative Media (TM) is easy enough to find. But as someone whose cynical gut has yet to betray him even once during the post-bailout era (it's ALWAYS worse than you think), I found this bit of candid party crashing most pleasing:
http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/the-absorption-of-matt-taibbi-by-first-look/
As for HSBC, you knew the fix was in even deeper than anyone thought possible when Jim Comey joined the company's board of directors a couple of months before Obushma nominated him as FBI Director and right after the DOJ (which houses the FBI) formally declared that the rule of law was dead in the HSBC case. With Jim Crony at the helm, the FBI quickly and with little fanfare abandoned its decades-old mission--"law enforcement"--and replaced it with "national security."
And thus the in-your-face marriage between the criminal banks and the fake terrorist PR industry is complete. We have much to look forward to.
Now I really need a drink.
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/greenwald-courting-conspiracy-theory-market-with-new-leak-and-a-cass-sunstein-mention/
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/12/15/mr-snowden-its-time-to-come-out-and-take-a-stand-publicly-as-to-your-intentions/
"Omidyar now has the only two people with exclusive access to the complete Snowden NSA cache, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Somehow, the same billionaire who co-financed the 'coup' in Ukraine with USAID, also has exclusive access to the NSA secrets—and very few in the independent media dare voice a skeptical word about it."
http://pando.com/2014/02/28/pierre-omidyar-co-funded-ukraine-revolution-groups-with-us-government-documents-show/
Here's another skeptic, Arthur Silber, who pisses off pretty much everyone with delicious panache:
"Omidyar knew what he was buying when he hired Greenwald, Scahill, and the rest. He was buying a collection of journalists who would burnish his image of himself as a crusader for 'privacy' and against government surveillance (although even that is very strictly limited in a manner most people appear not to grasp, as we shall see), as well as generally bolstering his PR campaign to portray himself as a 'good' billionaire. He also bought one more thing: journalism that would never threaten his own interests in any way that need concern him."
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2014/03/in-which-our-self-proclaimed-hero.html
Another true independent, Paul Craig Roberts, whose coverage of Ukranian goings-on has been remarkably prescient, had this to say:
"My criticism of Greenwald and Martin has nothing to do with their integrity or their character. I doubt the claims that Abby Martin grandstanded on 'Russia’s invasion of Ukraine' in order to boost her chances of moving into the more lucrative 'mainstream media.' My point is quite different. Even Abby Martin and Greenwald, both of whom bring us much light, cannot fully escape Western propaganda."
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/03/05/propaganda-rules-news-paul-craig-roberts/