A consortium of India journalists detail meticulously how HSBC is at the center of laundering money from drugs. Oh, there is lots of dirty money in other high places, to be sure. From the opium wars of the 1800’s, to prominent American families profiting from illegal opium trade, to the west invading Afghanistan which curiously caused opium production to soar, far too many of our supposedly respectable elites are awash in drug money. It’s important to note they were not somehow recently corrupted but rather have always profited from the drug trade.
The edifice of international banking is very dirty and very corrupt indeed.
Drug money saved banks in in 2008, says the UN.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.
Little or nothing has been done about this except for fining banks, which essentially is  a protection racket by governments. Governments pretend to enforce the law, dirty banks pay fines and pretend they will sin no more. Nothing changes. Government officials leave office and are then amply rewarded in any number of ways for their refusal to enforce Rule of Law.
Currently HSBC is smack in the middle of the drug trade, say the India journalists. Emphasis added.
For years, when banks have been caught laundering drug money, they have claimed that they did not know, that they were but victims of sneaky drug dealers and a few corrupt employees. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that a considerable portion of the global banking system is explicitly dedicated to handling the enormous volume of cash produced daily by dope traffickers.
Contrary to popular opinion, it is not “demand” from the world’s population which creates the mind destroying drug trade. Rather, it is the world financial oligarchy, looking for massive profits and the destruction of the minds of the population it is determined to dominate, which organized the drug trade. The case of HSBC underscores that point. Serving as the central bank of this global apparatus, is HSBC.
CBS News on the charming dealings of HSBC with all manner of slime, criminals, and thugs.
A 37-year-old computer security specialist named Hervé Falciani stole the huge cache of data in 2007 and gave it to the French government. It’s now being used to go after tax cheats all over the world. 60 Minutes, working with a group called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, obtained the leaked files. They show the bank did business with a collection of international outlaws: tax dodgers, arms dealers and drug smugglers — offering a rare glimpse into the highly secretive world of Swiss banking.