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Bloomberg View's Jonathan Weil says the Cocaine Cowboys know the best places to bank:
Last month a Senate panel held a hearing on the U.K. bank HSBC and its ties to drug lords, money laundering, al- Qaeda and rogue nations such as Iran andNorth Korea.
Here’s a bank with $2.7 trillion of assets that flouted U.S. laws for a decade, according to the July 17 report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. HSBC turned a blind eye to organized crime, Mexican drug cartels and overseas terrorism financiers, and gave them access to the U.S. banking system. HSBC’s main U.S. regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, for years tolerated its violations of anti-money laundering laws.
For this, HSBC and the OCC apologized. Justice Department fines are likely. It’s an outrage HSBC hasn’t had its U.S. banking licenses revoked, assuming the Senate panel’s report is accurate -- and there’s no reason to believe it isn’t.
Except we have this mutant species of corporation called too-big-to-fail banks whose collapse might wreck the global economy. No financial institution in the U.S. can survive a felony indictment. So these companies have become un-indictable, creating a perverse nonchalance regarding financial crimes.