HSBC very sorry for helping terrorists and drug cartels

[Correction]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...ney-laundering

Hours after the bank's chief executive, Stuart Gulliver, said he was "profoundly sorry" for the failures, assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer told a press conference in New York that Mexican drug traffickers deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars each day in HSBC accounts. At least $881m in drug trafficking money was laundered throughout the bank's accounts.

So when does Bradley Manning get to apologize and pay 2% of his annual income to get declared innocent and not face trial?

Their stock is up, by the way.

[Blubbartron]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...ney-laundering



So when does Bradley Manning get to apologize and pay 2% of his annual income to get declared innocent and not face trial?

Their stock is up, by the way.

Apparently when 2% of his income hits the 10 digit mark.

[archibaldcrane]

Whatever happened to the LIBOR scandal anyway?

[kuronosan]

Good thing I will be cancelling my accounts with them soon.

[quannum]

Whatever happened to the LIBOR scandal anyway?

First arrests in Libor manipulation case

LONDON/ZURICH (Reuters) - British police and anti-fraud officers made the first arrests in a global interest rate rigging scandal on Tuesday, detaining a former trader and two other men, sources said.

Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO), one of a posse of international prosecutors and regulators homing in on rate fixers, said three British men aged 33, 41 and 47 had been taken to a London police station in the early morning for questioning.

"The men are all British nationals currently living in the United Kingdom," the SFO said. A spokesman said late on Tuesday night that the three Libor suspects had been released on bail pending further investigation.

One of those arrested was former Citigroup and UBS trader Thomas Hayes, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The two other were Terry Farr and James Gilmour, who both worked at interdealer broker RP Martin, according to a separate source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. Hayes, Farr and Gilmour could not be immediately reached for comment.

On his LinkedIn page, Farr is listed as a "moneybroker at RP Martin". RP Martin declined to comment.

Prosecutors and regulators across Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan have been investigating how traders attempted to rig key interbank lending rates such as Libor, the London interbank offered rate, and its euro equivalent, Euribor.

Dozens of people are under investigation in the probe, but the arrests are the first since the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission initiated an industry-wide investigation into suspected Libor collusion in October 2008.

INVESTIGATION HEATS UP

Designed originally in the late 1960s to estimate the costs at which banks will lend to each other, Libor has become a central cog in the global financial system and a benchmark for $550 trillion in contracts ranging from interest rate derivatives to home loans and credit cards.

According to the Canadian Competition Bureau regulator, which is investigating anti-competitive activity relating to Libor, Hayes and other individuals -- not Farr and Gilmour -- attempted to manipulate yen Libor. This is the average interbank interest rate at which banks are prepared to lend one another unsecured funds denominated in Japanese yen.

Court documents filed by the Canadian regulator also claim Hayes contacted traders at other banks in London to get them to manipulate yen rates.

Hayes, who began his financial career at Britain's RBS, worked at Swiss bank UBS from 2006-09 before leaving for U.S. bank Citigroup, where he stayed until 2010.

The arrests mark a ratcheting up of the complex investigation since Barclays admitted in June that its traders had tried to manipulate Libor and Euribor from 2005 through 2009 and that the bank had low-balled rates during the 2007/08 credit crunch.

The British bank reached a $450 million settlement with U.S. and UK regulators.

But as details emerged about how traders brazenly gamed Libor, it triggered a public and political backlash that saw three of the bank's top executive leave and sparked inquiries into how banks lied about their true costs of borrowing -- and whether regulators either condoned or failed to stop manipulation.

More than a dozen other banks are being investigated. Switzerland's UBS and RBS are expected to be next to reach financial settlements shortly.

Spokespeople for UBS, Barclays, Citigroup and RBS declined to comment on the arrests. Police referred all questions to the SFO.

(Additional reporting by Anjuli Davies and Matt Scuffham; Editing by Matthew Tostevin and Alexander Smith)

.

[Moridam]

No criminal prosecution, I'm shocked. Truly shocked, I tell you.

State and federal authorities decided against indicting HSBC in a money-laundering case over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the world’s largest banks and ultimately destabilize the global financial system.

from http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/.../?ref=business

via

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/...g-to-fail.html

[archibaldcrane]

What a load of shit - there's 500 other white collar douchebags that would gladly step in if these guys got shitcanned and imprisoned. Jailing people doesn't significantly affect the financial position, give me a break.

[Correction]

nvm

[ronin sparthos]

What a load of shit - there's 500 other white collar douchebags that would gladly step in if these guys got shitcanned and imprisoned. Jailing people doesn't significantly affect the financial position, give me a break.

Don't be silly, only poor people go to jail.

[Correction]

Don't be silly, only black people go to jail.

there you go

[Mazmaz]

What a load of shit - there's 500 other white collar douchebags that would gladly step in if these guys got shitcanned and imprisoned. Jailing people doesn't significantly affect the financial position, give me a break.

Wait, sooo.. what's the solution? Are you arguing for not jailing anyone or the other extreme?

[Correction]

Wait, sooo.. what's the solution? Are you arguing for not jailing anyone or the other extreme?

I misunderstood his post at first too. He's arguing against the position taken by the DOJ that prosecutions would have toppled financial markets. Archi is saying it wouldn't because there's always more worker ants to feed the queen when one wave gets crushed.

[Mazmaz]

Oh thanks.

[ronin sparthos]

Otherwise known as "too big for jail"

[Kuya]

Just saw a report on DN about this. What exactly does a bank have to do to get people arrested if they can launder money for Al Qaeda, drug cartels and Iran and simply have to pay 2 months worth of profits?

The banking giant HSBC has escaped indictment for laundering billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels and groups linked to al-Qaeda. Despite evidence of wrongdoing, the U.S. Department of Justice has allowed the bank to avoid prosecution and pay a $1.9 billion fine. No top HSBC officials will face charges, either. We’re joined by Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi, author of "Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History." "You can do real time in jail in America for all kinds of ridiculous offenses," Taibbi says. "Here we have a bank that laundered $800 million of drug money, and they can’t find a way to put anybody in jail for that. That sends an incredible message, not just to the financial sector but to everybody. It’s an obvious, clear double standard, where one set of people gets to break the rules as much as they want and another set of people can’t break any rules at all without going to jail."

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/...ng_800_million

[mallister]

yeah, message is clear: i'm in the wrong fucking industry.

[kuronosan]

yeah, message is clear: i'm in the wrong fucking industry.

I think you get fucked in pretty much every industry.

[Moridam]

More from Taibbi over at RS: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...-joke-20121213

They're now saying that if you're not an important cog in the global financial system, you can't get away with anything, not even simple possession. You will be jailed and whatever cash they find on you they'll seize on the spot, and convert into new cruisers or toys for your local SWAT team, which will be deployed to kick in the doors of houses where more such inessential economic cogs as you live. If you don't have a systemically important job, in other words, the government's position is that your assets may be used to finance your own political disenfranchisement.

On the other hand, if you are an important person, and you work for a big international bank, you won't be prosecuted even if you launder nine billion dollars. Even if you actively collude with the people at the very top of the international narcotics trade, your punishment will be far smaller than that of the person at the very bottom of the world drug pyramid. You will be treated with more deference and sympathy than a junkie passing out on a subway car in Manhattan (using two seats of a subway car is a common prosecutable offense in this city). An international drug trafficker is a criminal and usually a murderer; the drug addict walking the street is one of his victims. But thanks to Breuer, we're now in the business, officially, of jailing the victims and enabling the criminals.

This is the disgrace to end all disgraces. It doesn't even make any sense. There is no reason why the Justice Department couldn't have snatched up everybody at HSBC involved with the trafficking, prosecuted them criminally, and worked with banking regulators to make sure that the bank survived the transition to new management. As it is, HSBC has had to replace virtually all of its senior management. The guilty parties were apparently not so important to the stability of the world economy that they all had to be left at their desks.

[Pirian]

I think you get fucked in pretty much every industry.

Except banking, of course

[hey]

Except banking, of course

Or politics.