(Reuters) - In April
2003, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York state bank
regulators cracked the whip on HSBC Bank USA, ordering it to do a better
job of policing itself for suspicious money flows. Staff in the bank's
anti-money laundering division, according to a person who worked there
at the time, flew into a "panic."
The U.S. unit of London-based HSBC Holdings
Plc quickly rallied. It hired a tough federal prosecutor to oversee
anti-money laundering efforts. It installed monitoring systems for
operations that had grown unwieldy during the bank's U.S. expansion. The
aim, as HSBC said in an agreement with regulators at the time, was to
"ensure that the bank fully addresses all deficiencies in the bank's
anti-money laundering policies and procedures."
Nearly a decade later, the effort has failed to satisfy law-enforcement officials.
The
extent of that failure is laid out in confidential documents reviewed
by Reuters that originate from investigations of HSBC's U.S. operations
by two U.S. Attorneys' offices.
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Let this serve as a reminder that it ain't the ghetto drug king pins or the kid in Ocean City selling pot at Seacrets that makes the drug world so profitable. It's the rich businessman, the Senator, the Coast Guard commander, AND the BANKERS who arrange the loads, the delivery, and the subsequent laundering of BILLIONS of dollars. THAT'S the biggest reason the drug trade will NEVER, EVER, be shut down or stopped. EVER. When a Coast Guard commander gets $100,000 (in cash) to NOT be at the bay entrance at 2AM this Saturday, or a banker gets 20% of 800 million dollars to "wash" it, well, you get the picture....
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