Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a JOKE

I have posted this before on similar threads, but it's worth airing it at every opportunity to remind people of just how badly things are stacked against the ordinary man and woman, when it comes to corruption and "Justice".

www.bloomberg.com...

Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history -- a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international coc aine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.

Just think about that for a moment. They laundered $378.4Billion, so I wonder what their cut was on that amount. Now HSBC is fined $1.9Billion which, given the amounts involved, probably constitutes just a fraction of the profit they made.

Interesting reading indeed. And, for those still wondering why no big banks execs are behind bars and that there have not been mass arrests of bankers... maybe this is the reason:

No big U.S. bank -- Wells Fargo included -- has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act or any other federal law. Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again.

So there you go! So sorry, we made a bad judgement, lessons have been learned and we promise not to be naughty again! Large ones at the club to celebrate while plotting the next big money making scheme!

Thing is, all that drug money finds it's way back into the economies of nations and makes the banks a lot of money. That money also gets used in "campaign funds" and "lobbying" on behlaf of the banks. In essence, it's a big money-go-round for those lucky enough (corrupt enough) to be in the game.

Just think about that the next time you see the multi-agency SWAT teams kicking in the door, shooting the family pet, and dragging away the perp found to be selling a few joints.

reply to post by christina-66


Going to be? It already is hell...as a child in the 70's I could ride my bike anywhere I liked stay out til dark, never were there apparent lurking dangers at every turn, people left their doors unlocked at night. So what happened? Richard Nixon happened. It has all been down hill since; things get worse daily as if there is an exponential multiplier attached. Just sift through all the topics here at ATS all the MSM headlines; and ask yourself how could hell be any worse? I would not bring another child in this world if my life depended on it; I rather all the useless suffering be spared; all the ignorance and hate never be borne onto the back of an innocent precious child; that is this world.

What happens? A child is born and taught to tow the line of ignorance; and not question it. They become perpetuator's and perpetraitor's for all the mistakes our forefathers made...tow the line hate a people you never met; become a monster just like us.

Lay it down, exactly what are you fighting for? Is the battle yours...did you create it? Or are you just sustaining it and have no idea why? Other than tradition and expectation; because that's just how things were always done around here.

Look in a childs face now imagine them hating and killing; just because we can't lay down petty nonsense that someone handed us. It's game of pass the feces; here perfect innocent child your turn. The world is sick and the answer so simple don't pass the turd; wash your hands of it, and don't encourage anyone to pick it up.

really is this even news? this has been going on for a very long time, opium trade still goes on in the open . you know for medical reasons cough cough. just ask the cia. thery are are drug dealers.

reply to post by BigBrotherDarkness


I hear you. I have zero faith in government and less than that in global corporations. We are given the illusion of democracy - a paper veil - as the HSBC case evidences yet again. The power of the global corporation is incomprehensible -0 greater than any governments - and they are unelected. There is a name for that.

However I have limitless faith in people. Why? Because despite the MSM headlines, the constant stream of bad news and horror - the majority of people are extremely decent.

I grew up in the 70's too and can relate to your description of it. However, I moved to a village 20 years ago to raise my children and life is still like that here. Everyone knows everyone - everyone looks out for everyone and yes, we do have our bampots - but because its a village everyone knows them and they can't get up to much.

If we actually moved away from our tv's and pc's - ignored the headlines and lived the reality - government and big business just couldn't continue to use the scare tactics that they do.

reply to post by Erongaricuaro


HSBC ,or the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation ,has a long long history,and you are spot on.
Stars to you for the post BTW.

Prohibition in the USA made certain people very rich.
The war on Drugs is doing the same. But sadly their is more.

A new ultra black project for the DoD to have built or researched costs some serious money.To keep it secret it has to avoid congressional oversight and budgeting.You can only justify buying so many 1000 dollar hammers.
Hence the war on drugs-unaccounted (no paper trail except for Bush the 1st telephone number on Barry Seals person or a few articles by Michael Ruppert) and huge amounts of cash. Illegal drugs in the USA are a few hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

The banks HAVE to be brought into it with those numbers.After you spend a few hundred bil here,a few hundred bil their,its easy to see how Donald Rumsfeld and Dov Zakheim realized that someone forgot to move the decimal point and the DoD misplaced a few trillion.

Many of the folks involved believe that when they work with this system,it is for patriotic reasons.And if a few folks are lost,well you can not make an omelette as they say.
And to keep the flow of monies coming it,it has to be illegal to avoid the paper trail.

What is the ole saying, "if you want to be a criminal don't rob a bank, but rather own it."

It should become pretty obvious now that there are two sets of rights for the people, 1) for the elite, and 2) for the rest of society. Utter disbelief right now

Excerpt from the article :

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.

I went to court for possession of an illegal substance (a small quantity of soft drug), and was sentenced to a fine equivalent to 8 months of revenue (because I do get up in the morning and go to work, I also pay my taxes and my bills, and do everything a so called responsible citizen is supposed to do).

So let's see, no court procedure for the bank and five weeks of revenue lost,

Court procedure for me and eight months of revenue lost.

I guess I should have offered free lunch to someone in the Department of Justice,

My mistake...

The difference here, and I am not saying it is okay, but if you do criminally prosecute HSBC or fine them tens of billions of dollars, it would financially effect tens of millions of innocent people.

Imagine all the money that would be lost in pension funds and IRA's that have stock in HSBC or other legal business that this may effect. The truth is, these bank are too intertwined in everything, so too big to fail or prosecute is the only option.

reply to post by tide88


I hear you, it's kind of like my cat and his choice of prey. He lets the big rats that do the real damage slip away because they're hard to catch and they bite back. He targets the smaller mice instead, and play/torture them to death.

It's nice to know that the State is just as pragmatic as any other predator out there.

reply to post by tide88


If the intent was justice then go after the people who did the deed,and allowed it to happen.
No matter how many times we are conditioned to believe that a corporation is a person,it does not change the fact that a real person did the act.

The executive who signed off on it,give him jail time.All the way up and all the way down.Then no one who was innocent would be punished.Or do corporate employees get to use the line `I was just following orders. `.

reply to post by tide88


Aye maybe they are too entwined in society as a corporation but if they started jailing the CEO's and other board members for their corporation's criminality they'd get their acts sorted our quick smart.

Sometimes this website confuses me. Here's a real conspiracy, with the players so confident in their actions that they get caught out so often, yet it hasn't got thousands of posts. If it was a video of a tiny little flashing light in the sky it would have loads more stars and flags. Wake up people !! here's 100% concrete evidence you're being played by your governements and intelligence services.

If only we could come together in our respective societies, put our personal agenda's of politics, aliens or religion to one side then something might change. The enemy is unregulated banking, political control by corporations and the influencing of our opinions by a corrupted media.

This case clearly illustrates the crony capitalism we have in this country. It illustrates how Wall Street controls the federal government, and that the rule of law is dead here.

reply to post by Cobra.EXE


I said this on another thread but its worth repeating.

In 2011 HSBC had an income of $106 billion. They're fine of $1.9 billion equates to less than 2% of that income, which less than 1 week's income, not around 5 as your source states. So it's worse than they are saying. Even when we're commenting on the corruption we must never forget that they are still trying to manipulate the info and the message to make the blow seem less severe.

Corporations that indulge in criminal activity should be given the death sentence i.e. Be disbanded and broken up.

Talk about a double standard...This is such blatant corruption it's astounding! I think that sometimes it's true that the best place to hide something is in plain sight..and so some of the corruption we experience, The Federal Reserve, Banking cartels hand and hand with government, etc. is on such a large scale and right in front of us that so many people simply can't process it, and therefore ignore it, don't get mad, and then comfortably go on with their lives being pacified and entertained by sports, hollywood, alcohol, drugs, etc..

The HSBC bankers knowingly involved in this along with whoever should've made sure they were prosecuted appropriately but instead let them get off with a fine are the embodiment of evil. There are millions of people making minimum wage doing honest work, paying their taxes, etc. and yet these bankers who lie, cheat, steal, and launder drug money, using the illegality of drugs for their own benefit and profit (while drug users are locked up and lives are ruined) are the ones who get ahead and live an opulent lifestyle of yachts, mansions, and private jets. The only solution I can think of is for people not to give them their business. Pay off your credit card debts, don't buy things on credit..

reply to post by Hopeforeveryone


I think it's partly to do with the fact that the fake money and fake economic system is such a huge and devastating reality that once people begin to toss it around they're brains they run away and hide from it and drift back to sleep.

Once you have your eureka moment about the economic system you can never go back to sleep and it colours every part of your life forever more. Booms, busts, wars, famine, and disease are all side effects that would be conquered very quickly if the global economic system was not fraudulent. Without the detrimental activities of the elites there'd be no scarcity, no need for money, no need for humans to work, and no debt. Money is debt.

reply to post by Cobra.EXE


Exactly the game is rigged.. had any of us done anything like this to make ends meet wwe would have everything taken away and put in jail. If you are a huge corporation they get a tiny fine and allowed to stay in business.

the fine they got is pocket change.

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by Erongaricuaro

 

The term free market is in reality International Corporate Banker control of the planet. It is through ICBs that the original opium wars were ran. The ICBs are behind all of these huge illegal money markets, including the rising global trade in slaves.

What we are seeing in Mexico, is the ICBs building themselves an army to invade the US through our porous borders, and end this experiment in government that is the US of A.

I will give you the term "free-market" can carry some unintended and contrived connotations so, please, for those those who may be confused by corporate doublespeak allow me to re-phrase that in a more innocuous term of open-market or non-restricted market as I had intended it to be read. Thanks. One might argue the Opium Wars greatly helped initiate or consolidate the wealth and power of your "ICB's" for the global presence they occupy today.

What you had been seeing in Mexico under our recently vacated, expired-term president Calderón was the South American coc aine operations, under the auspices and direction of the CIA, relocating closer to their market and the former presidente perhaps unwittingly doing their bidding by waging the full-out Drug War by welcoming onto Mexican soil that unholy drug-running agency as advisors to the "war" - which term may perhaps be more appropriately conceptualized if viewed as similar to the "gas wars" of the 50's and 60's where gasoline stations dramatically and routinely slashed their prices in order to attract more business and promote higher consumption.

The "army" you speak of is largely represented by the CIA paramilitary-trained Zetas cartel who would move into and supplant other operations after police and drug war forces would cripple or de-stabilize local activities - all according to the master plan. However, not all were successfully disabled for a smooth transition and sieges of violence would ensue throughout those power-struggles. Similar instances occurred in my state like when the mayor/alcalde of a small municipio was apprehended and slain. It is rumored she unwittingly followed advisors' plans to destabilize activities in her township but the locals were able to keep the CIA cartel forces from entering and taking over. She paid the price for succumbing to the altruistic "drugs are bad" rhetoric and not seeing the larger picture. These "Zetas" may perhaps be viewed similar to the CIA-created "Al-Qeada" which also are used as a media-hyped boogeyman to keep Americans fearful of foreigners - all the while operating under the auspices of American rogue agencies. Bear in mind this has been a simplified explanation of a grander monster but should provide for a better insight to events south of your border.

Sadly, the end of the great US of A experiment already occurred in Dallas nearly 50 years ago. You have repeatedly watched global interests remove the American Dream and replace it with their own erotic wet-dream of power and control over a great nation. Kennedy's folly was believing he was actually President of the United States of America, a position no one has truly held since that time.

Originally posted by Hopeforeveryone
Sometimes this website confuses me. Here's a real conspiracy, with the players so confident in their actions that they get caught out so often, yet it hasn't got thousands of posts. If it was a video of a tiny little flashing light in the sky it would have loads more stars and flags. Wake up people !! here's 100% concrete evidence you're being played by your governements and intelligence services.

If only we could come together in our respective societies, put our personal agenda's of politics, aliens or religion to one side then something might change. The enemy is unregulated banking, political control by corporations and the influencing of our opinions by a corrupted media.

edit on 16-12-2012 by Hopeforeveryone because: typo

Reality check, most ufo threads get very very few flags and stars, they post against enormous aggressive team of skeptics that walk all over people, so I consider why bother, just close down the ufology department and declare the whole site ignorant. Because a few can bully forever, they without sightings and experiences have nonstop owned all the ufology department here.

Now, on the other hand this does have a great many flags and stars.

Just wondering why you had to get that little slant in, when that is something that has to be exposed in a major way, and not doing so is resulting in world wide slavery, and holding technology back by decades, or even over a century.

By the way it seems this goes on for the same reason. The same people holding back clean technology and enslaving citizens are behind this level of two tiered justice.

Prison for the very wealthy if it even happens is like a 5 star hotel on an exotic island.

Originally posted by Heliocentric
reply to post by tide88

 

I hear you, it's kind of like my cat and his choice of prey. He lets the big rats that do the real damage slip away because they're hard to catch and they bite back. He targets the smaller mice instead, and play/torture them to death.

It's nice to know that the State is just as pragmatic as any other predator out there.

Very well said: