4 ms·

I don't believe that your interlocutors are anti-bank per se, but instead they are raising concern about unequal treatment under the law. In this case, the bank

I don't believe that your interlocutors are anti-bank per se, but instead they are raising concern about unequal treatment under the law. In this case, the banks are the benefactors and the individual, by comparison, would be the loser were he/she to encounter a similar situation.

rayiner 13y ago
These sorts of laws are all about intent. The reason individuals tend to lose in these situations while large organizations do not is: 1) Large organizations spend a ton of money and effort on legal compliance, while individuals and small organizations do not; 2) It's much more difficult to impute intent onto a large organization that is incidentally exposed to criminal activity as a matter of course. The basic fact is this: if you're a bank operating in Central or Latin America, your accounts will be used for money laundering to some degree. This is true no matter how strong your controls are. This is just the nature of being an institution that offers banking services to the public in a country that is flush with drug money. However, if you're an individual and your accounts are used to launder drug money, that gives rise to a totally different inference of intent. Individuals rarely find themselves incidentally or accidentally involved with money laundering. Yes, large organizations tend to get the "benefit of the doubt" in such cases, but it's wholly warranted.
- sseveran 13y ago
  They don't get the benefit of the doubt. Prosecuting HSBC and its officers would be a mammoth undertaking costing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. The reason HSBC (or any other large organization) pleads guilty or enters into a non-prosecution agreement is that it usually lets them off for less (on a risk adjusted basis) than fighting. The prosecutors also don't want to spend the several years in litigation so they get a scalp to carry in front of the cameras to claim that they are being tough. If we were serious as a country about compliance with our laws we would have just stripped them of their US banking license. Of course this would have rather large ramifications for many other people that would mostly be bad.

rayiner 13y ago

These sorts of laws are all about intent. The reason individuals tend to lose in these situations while large organizations do not is: 1) Large organizations spend a ton of money and effort on legal compliance, while individuals and small organizations do not; 2) It's much more difficult to impute intent onto a large organization that is incidentally exposed to criminal activity as a matter of course. The basic fact is this: if you're a bank operating in Central or Latin America, your accounts will be used for money laundering to some degree. This is true no matter how strong your controls are. This is just the nature of being an institution that offers banking services to the public in a country that is flush with drug money. However, if you're an individual and your accounts are used to launder drug money, that gives rise to a totally different inference of intent. Individuals rarely find themselves incidentally or accidentally involved with money laundering. Yes, large organizations tend to get the "benefit of the doubt" in such cases, but it's wholly warranted.

sseveran 13y ago
They don't get the benefit of the doubt. Prosecuting HSBC and its officers would be a mammoth undertaking costing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. The reason HSBC (or any other large organization) pleads guilty or enters into a non-prosecution agreement is that it usually lets them off for less (on a risk adjusted basis) than fighting. The prosecutors also don't want to spend the several years in litigation so they get a scalp to carry in front of the cameras to claim that they are being tough. If we were serious as a country about compliance with our laws we would have just stripped them of their US banking license. Of course this would have rather large ramifications for many other people that would mostly be bad.