Congress Report: DOJ Protected Criminal Bank/s via FRCS
US Congress report just released documents how the DOJ blocked the criminal indictment of HSBC despite its stupefying criminal abuses. Download that report here and the summary here. The report claims:
|
The UK’s Financial Services Authority “hampered” an official investigation into money laundering allegations against banking giant HSBC and UK Chancellor George Osborne sought to influence the inquiry to prevent prosecution. US officials claimed that they were concerned it might cause a global financial disaster – but this is not believable.
Kindergarten level logic shows that between the two extreme positions – doing next to nothing (what happened) and closing the bank down – there were millions of alternatives which would give a measure of justice while protecting the legitimate financial system.
Despite its overwhelming criminality, HSBC had the gall to have New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer forced out of office after it reported three transactions totalling $10,000 in 2007. Spitzer had prosecuted many criminal banks. HSBC’s criminal Statement of Facts states :
….. HSBC Bank USA processed over 100 million wire transfers totaling over $300 trillion. Over two-thirds of these transactions involved customers in standard or medium risk countries. Therefore, in this four-year period alone, over $200 trillion in wire transfers were not reviewed ….
How and why did HSBC isolate 3 small transactions by a criminal bank opponent – when it had established a system which ignored 67 million others totalling over $200 trillion? The logical explanation is that there was some type of tip-off or trade-off.
HSBC’s 2012 settlement detailed how Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel and Colombia’s Norte del Valle cartel laundered $881m through HSBC and a Mexican unit, and how the bank violated US sanction laws by doing business with customers in Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba.
Public outrage at DOJ bias is summarized in this media quote from Matt Taibbi’s “Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail“:
“Flooring politicians, lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine – $1.9 billion, or about five weeks’ profit – but they didn’t extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses. People may have outrage fatigue about Wall Street, and more stories about billionaire greedheads getting away with more stealing often cease to amaze. But the HSBC case went miles beyond the usual paper-pushing, keypad-punching sort-of crime, committed by geeks in ties, normally associated with Wall Street. In this case, the bank literally got away with murder – well, aiding and abetting it, anyway. For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years –………. The bank also moved money for organizations linked to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped countries like Iran, the Sudan and North Korea evade sanctions; and, in between helping murderers and terrorists and rogue states, aided countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash.”
This quote is typical of the unfolding mega-corruption which has since become authenticated. Often, such media authors and their articles were insulted as being far-fetched. But what now? What they wrote has been confirmed as fact – or even perhaps an underestimate.
Are we supposed to ignore the protection given to the bank that financed thousands of murders? Under the law relating to criminal organizations (RICO), giving such protection would typically make you a member of that criminal organization.
DOJ Protection for Big Banks:
• William Lerach represented Enron pension funds damaged by banks including Credit Suisse who aided and abetted the Enron fraud. He was investigated in 2007 and subsequently jailed over a relatively minor matter. The banks’ participation in the criminal fraud was ignored.
• Hervé Falciani tried to expose the massive criminal activities of HSBC acting for organized crime, but was ignored by the DOJ, and became a victim of murder attempts until given protection by the French government
• HSBC laundered billions of dollars for terrorists, Iran and drug cartels, ignored tens of thousands of illegal transactions, yet no individual was jailed or fined . HSBC reported three transactions by Eliot Spitzer in 2007 totalling $10,000 and he was eventually forced to resign. Spitzer had prosecuted many criminal banks.
• In 2007, Bradley Birkenfeld reported massive criminal practices by both UBS & Credit Suisse, but was prosecuted by the Florida DOJ and jailed. Credit Suisse was not publicly exposed despite his damming testimony.
• I also reported Credit Suisse to the Florida DOJ in 2007 regarding criminal practices with suspected terrorist connections– at the same time as Bradley Birkenfeld. The DOJ ignored both Birkenfeld’s and my evidence of serious crime in the bank.
• Birkenfeld claimed that political people in Washington DC were being protected thru concealment of the identities of US tax fraudsters and conspirators.
