Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke | | Rolling Stone The banks' laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC's Mexican branches and "deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows."
This bears repeating: in order to more efficiently move as much illegal money as possible into the "legitimate" banking institution HSBC, drug dealers specifically designed boxes to fit through the bank's teller windows. Tony Montana's henchmen marching dufflebags of cash into the fictional "American City Bank" in Miami was actually more subtle than what the cartels were doing when they washed their cash through one of Britain's most storied financial institutions.
Washington has been bought and paid for. The $1.9 billion "settlement" is a joke. HSBC should be dismantled and anyone who had anything to do with the money laundering should be in jail. I can't imagine why anyone would want to give politicians in D.C. more power to do anything.