Remember when HSBC got fined $1.9 Billion for laundering $7 Billion for Mexican drug cartels and $19.4 Billion for Iranian terrorist groups and a Saudi Arabian bank the CIA has linked to al Qaeda?
In 2008, for example, the CEO of HSBC Mexico was told that Mexican law enforcement had a recording of a Mexican drug lord saying that HSBC Mexico was the place to launder money.
No criminal charges were ever brought against HSBC and the bank's charter was never in danger of being revoked.
It was because of this case that Eric Holder
confirmed that banks are Too Big To Jail.
Well, guess who's back in the news for laundering money for terrorists?
A major U.S. bank has agreed to a settlement for transferring funds on the behalf of financiers for the militant group Hezbollah, the Treasury Department announced on Tuesday.
Concluding that HSBC's actions "were not the result of willful or reckless conduct," Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control accepted a $32,400 settlement from the bank. Treasury noted, as did HSBC in a statement to HuffPost, that the violations were voluntarily reported.
Ah! So if you
voluntarily report it, then it kind-of never happened.
Remember this is the same bank that after being busted the first time said:
"The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organization from the one that made those mistakes."
- HSBC Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver
In fact, almost nothing at the bank changed.
The hero in this case is a whistleblower named Everett Stern. Please watch his video at Occupy Wall Street.
As Stern says, "They admit to financing terrorism and they get fined $32,000. Where if I were to do that, I would go to jail for life."
Now to put this into perspective, consider the recent case of "bio-terrorism" that the government is much more afraid of.
“It’s not uncommon for environmental protesters to face arrest, but here’s an apparent first: On Friday, Oklahoma City police charged a pair of environmental activists with staging a “terrorism hoax” after they unfurled a pair of banners covered in glitter—a substance local cops considered evidence of a faux biochemical assault.”
In Oklahoma, a conviction for a “terrorist hoax” carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
To sum this up: bank laundering billions of dollars for drug cartels and terrorists = very small fine and no criminal action.
Using glitter at a protest = get arrested for bioterrorism.