NEW YORK — When the Justice Department last week announced its record $1.9 billion settlement with the British bank HSBC, prosecutors called it a powerful blow to a dysfunctional institution accused of laundering money for Mexico’s murderous drug cartels, Libya, and Iran.
But to some former federal prosecutors, it was only the latest case of the government’s stopping short of bringing criminal money laundering charges against a big bank or its executives, at least in part on the rationale that could cause such banks to fail.
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If George Bush or Ronald Reagan pursued a policy that let executives off the hook for flagrantly criminal activities leading, the case of Mexico, to murder and political subversion, Democrats would be jumping up from their seats in Congress and the Senate decrying a lack of moral fiber and political will. The most important line in this story is that an individual would suffer the most dire consequences if he screwed up his IRS paperwork. International banks? Nah...If these guys had been funding the Mafia in New York and Boston instead of drug cartels, you'd see entire delegations shaking their fists. But these are not housewives in Staten Island or East Boston who have had their sons and husbands murdered by the Mafia, they are only little brown women in Mexico who don't vote.
Obama has hired incompetent officials - that is why there is no prosecutions. Also still no prosecution in the derivatives and mortgage scandal that brought this country to its knees. Diversity leads to low quality.