51–60 of 118 posts
Do bad business consistently, as HSBC has since basically the dawn of its existence, and get your corporate charter revoked.
Corporations are cynical, self-aware entities. And some, like HSBC, are sociopaths and a blight on civilization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is complicated, for many reasons. A very important one is that responsibility is very diluted. - A bank executive opens an account to a seemingly legit company. - The compliance department OKs the account opening. - A bank teller receives 50k USD in cash every month. - Another teller receives another 50k USD in cash every month. - The head of the branch doesn't report strange activity. - The AML system by the bank…
Then by that logic, the drug runner should not be jailed either, as they too are a victim rather than an accomplice. May be they too are being threatened by the cartel to cooperate, and so on. Taken far enough, you really can't penalize anyone and things like sanctions don't work and have no teeth.
In your and the OPs examples:
- CEO should have a large amount of agency and awareness of the situation, meaning they should be on the hook for severe negligence at the least. If intent can be proven, that should definitely result in criminal charges.
- A bank teller might have awareness if they personally handle suspiciously large transactions per month, but the amount of agency they have in the situation is low. They can either report it up their chain of command, do nothing, or work elsewhere. You might be able to demonstrate intent here if it’s the same teller and they don’t raise any alarms, but that’s also assuming nobody has valid reasons for regular 50k deposits and that the teller doesn’t fear for their job or wellbeing.
- Drug runner is a tricky one—how much agency do they have? Are they under duress? They likely intend to run drugs unless they’re in the know about their cargo. As other commenters posted, there’s also no official way to dilute responsibility here as the organization running drugs isn’t beholden to our legal system, so our theoretical drug runner is the only person available to punish.
It’s an interesting thought experiment. I’d like to hear thoughts on how folks think stuff like this should be prosecuted — what outcomes do we want to promote and what actions would promote those outcomes?
The unfortunate outcomes of these events is that, like a ratchet, it just gets harder and harder for ordinary citizens to go about their lives. It used to be that you could just walk into a bank and open an account on the spot. And it's still like that in many developing countries. It's now at the point that just having a bank account is becoming an asset in itself. It's an increasingly major process to open one, and…
I have a Schwab account I made online and had to deal with basically 0 humans to create. The worst I have to deal with is sometimes if I spend a lot at once I have to answer some automated questions to confirm my information hasn't been stolen. How do you reconcile this with the claim it's getting "harder and harder" when the bar to open and access a bank account is so low?
In my experience the risk of becoming unbanked, even temporarily, has become worse and worse for the increasing number of “outliers”:
- a common name
- previous victims of identity theft or doxxing
- legal domestic cryptocurrency exchange use
- privacy-minded people (VPN use, even accidental)
- nomadic lifestyles (lots of IPs, a VOIP number)
- a cash-first lifestyle
- any negative credit or public records irrespective of time passed
- bad press about you out there (yes, some products screen for this)
Why aren't bankers who launder billions for drug cartels given the kind of multi-decade federal prison sentences that 25-yr-old kids smuggling a few kilos of cocaine from Mexico to the United State are? It certainly makes it look like outfits like the FBI and DEA are little more than the enforcement arms of an organized white-collar crime cartel operating out of Wall Street offices, doesn't it? Amusingly James Comey…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a source for the claim that drug cartels "try all the banks to see which ones they can launder money through"? I don't believe that's how it works at all. If you read, for example Drug Cartels Do Not Exist by Oswaldo Zavala, you'll see that this money is fundamental to how global finance operates. Drug money provided the necessary liquidity to keep the world finance system from crashing in '08. It's the m…
For HSBC I doubt it. But I remember seeing a map of all the branches the defunct BCCI bank had, and they had something like 10x more branches in Colombia than in the US (this was a Pakistani Bank). They went under a few years later.
HSBC was founded to finance the Opium wars in China in the 19th century. Let's be adults here, the world's biggest banks aren't letting drug trade profits, the world's most lucrative trade, simply fall to small fries. They own it.
Why aren't bankers who launder billions for drug cartels given the kind of multi-decade federal prison sentences that 25-yr-old kids smuggling a few kilos of cocaine from Mexico to the United State are? It certainly makes it look like outfits like the FBI and DEA are little more than the enforcement arms of an organized white-collar crime cartel operating out of Wall Street offices, doesn't it? Amusingly James Comey…
If a drug mule has powerful friends they’d probably get a lighter sentence too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a source for the claim that drug cartels "try all the banks to see which ones they can launder money through"? I don't believe that's how it works at all. If you read, for example Drug Cartels Do Not Exist by Oswaldo Zavala, you'll see that this money is fundamental to how global finance operates. Drug money provided the necessary liquidity to keep the world finance system from crashing in '08. It's the m…
That is an exceptionally contrarian claim.
Why aren't bankers who launder billions for drug cartels given the kind of multi-decade federal prison sentences that 25-yr-old kids smuggling a few kilos of cocaine from Mexico to the United State are? It certainly makes it look like outfits like the FBI and DEA are little more than the enforcement arms of an organized white-collar crime cartel operating out of Wall Street offices, doesn't it? Amusingly James Comey…
I hate banks as much as anyone but... The concept of "money laundering" is a fabricated offense that shouldn't even exist. It basically shifts the duties of law enforcement onto private businesses and individuals. The expectation for bankers or real estate agents to uncover criminals when the police struggle to do so is unreasonable and doesn't make sense. Sure they should cooperate with police investigations but the…
What you're saying is that even though money laundering is necessary for drug cartel operations, it shouldn't be a crime (or should be a much lesser crime). So if I carry the drugs across state lines, even if I put in the same abstract amount of effort to completing a drug trade as the folks at the bank laundering money, my crime is worse?
There is the obvious argument that neither of these should be real crimes. But the fact remains that today in the world that exists, one group of people that facilitate drug cartel operations are punished much more harshly than another group. The disparity in punishment is what the parent comment is remarking on.
Someone has to suggest a book about how money laundering works?
https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-rep...