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to big to jail!!
JC29856
Posts: 9,617
while obomba and BOeNER, republicans and democrats, the left and right masturbate over fiscal cliffs, right to work and whatever else guns, abortions etc banks execs get off scott free for money laundering to the mexican drug cartels and aiding "terrorist" organizations...someone pass me the lube!
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-a ... o-big-jail
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/13/167174208 ... g-to-exist
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/bl ... e-20121213
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi ... reat-year/
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-a ... o-big-jail
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/13/167174208 ... g-to-exist
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/bl ... e-20121213
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi ... reat-year/
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"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
really?? what is common knowlegdse that obomba and BOeNER, republicans and democrats, the left and right masturbate over fiscal cliffs, right to work and whatever else guns, abortions (yes i agree this is common knowledge) or that their are different sets of laws for big banks and the kid on the corner selling weed?
What HSBC has now admitted to is, more or less, the worst behavior that a bank can possibly be guilty of. You know, they violated the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Bank Secrecy Act. And we’re talking about massive amounts of money. It was $9 billion that they failed to supervise properly. These crimes were so obvious that apparently the cartels in Mexico specifically designed boxes to put cash in so that they would fit through the windows of HSBC teller windows.
And emails found where bank officials were instructing officials in Iran and in some other countries at how best to hide their efforts to move money into their system.
There are 50,000 marijuana possession cases in New York City alone every year. And here we have a bank that laundered $800 million of drug money, and they can’t find a way to put anybody in jail for that.
From 2006 to 2010, the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, the Norte del Valle cartel in Colombia and other drug traffickers laundered at least $881 million in illegal narcotics trafficking proceeds through HSBC Bank USA. These traffickers didn’t have to try very hard. They would sometimes deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in a single day into a single account, using boxes, as Loretta said, designed to fit the precise dimensions of the tellers’ windows in HSBC’s Mexico branches.
It was just an unfortunate coincidence that the reports were almost juxtaposed-the reports of the punishment given Stephanie George and that given HSBC and UBS. Stephanie, of course, was not the first.
William James Rummel has been imprisoned since the late 1970s and will be there for the rest of his life. That is because he was convicted of three crimes. He used a credit card to obtain $80 worth of goods and services, a crime for which he served 3 years in jail. When he got out he passed a forged check in the amount of $23.86 which bought him 4 years in jail. He ended his career as an air conditioning repairman, charging a customer $120.75 for a repair with which the customer was not satisfied. He refused to return the money and was convicted of obtaining money under false pretenses. Since that was his third conviction he was sentenced to life in prison. In reviewing his sentence the U.S. Supreme Court said his life sentence did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Commenting on the Court’s finding Justice Rehnquist said: “We all of course, would like to think that we are ‘moving down the road toward human decency. . . .’ Within the confines of this judicial proceeding, however, we have no way of knowing in which direction that road lies.” Some legal cartographers could probably have helped the Justice out.
On December 12, 2012 the New York Times described the plight of Stephanie George. Her boyfriend stashed a lockbox with a half-kilogram of cocaine in her attic and when the police found it she was charged with its possession even though she claimed not to have known of its presence in her house. The judge said he thought the sentence unreasonable but he was compelled by governing statutes to sentence Ms. George to life in prison. In contemplating their fates Ms. George and Mr. Rummel (and many others) may well wonder how things could have come out differently for them. The answer is, they should have been banks. Banks don’t go to prison even though they are persons and even when their offenses involve billions of dollars.
On the same day that Ms. George’s plight was described, HSBC agreed to pay $1.92 billion for worse things than failing to properly repair an air conditioning unit or store a bit of coke. According to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations in a report issued in July 2012, the bank “exposed the U.S. financial system to a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing risks due to poor anti-money laundering controls.” The banks’ conduct enabled Mexican drug cartels to launder tainted money through the American financial system, and the bank worked closely with Saudi Arabian banks linked to terrorists.
The bank is a person for purpose of making political contributions to assorted candidates but it is not a person for purposes of being charged with criminal wrongdoing or going to jail. A criminal indictment of either the bank person or a human person, we are told, might place the institution at risk of collapse. Critics can take comfort in knowing that the bank did not get off scot-free. In addition to paying $1.92 billion to settle the charges against it, it will enter into a deferred prosecution agreement that suggests if it or a human person doesn’t mend its ways criminal charges might yet be brought. Lanny Breuer, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division said that: “HSBC is being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight-and worse-that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries, and to facilitate hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries.” Having described its actions he nonetheless defended the punishment saying it was a “just, very real and very powerful result.” He’s right. $1.92 billion is a lot of money and it means that instead of HSBC having a 2011 profit of $22 billion it will only have a profit of about $20 billion.
December 19 we learned that UBS had settled with U.S. and British regulators for having manipulated LIBOR rates. (LIBOR is the interest rate banks charge each other for inter-bank loans. Depending on what time period one is examining the bank was either reporting artificially high rates or artificially low rates in order to deceive regulators and/or make money.) According to the Wall Street Journal, its review of a federal report suggests Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have lost more than $3 billion as a result of the manipulation of LIBOR. UBS is not facing criminal charges since they might endanger its stability. Its Japanese branch “has agreed to enter a plea to one count of wire fraud relating to the manipulation of certain benchmark interest rates, including Yen Libor.” The bank is not going to jail for the same reason HSBC is not going to jail. Federal Regulators said if criminal charges were brought the bank’s stability would be threatened.
Mr. Rummel and Ms. George greatly regret the fact that they were not in the banking business. Their incarceration has greatly affected their stability.
John Knock, 65, has been incarcerated for more than 16 years. The only evidence against him was the testimony of informants; Knock was convicted of conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana. The judge sentenced him to 20 years for money laundering plus not one, but two terms of life-without-parole -- a punishment typically reserved for murderers. Despite the uniquely unjust sentence, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his pleas for reconsideration via appeal or court order.
Before he was incarcerated, Paul Free obtained a BA in marine biology and was starting a school while teaching English in Mexico. Now 62, he has continued his passion for education behind bars, where he has lived for the past 18 years. Free helps inmates prepare for the General Equivalency Diploma tests, and according to the petition, prison officials have applauded Paul’s hard work and his students’ high graduation rate. Paul suffers from degenerative joint disease, failing eyesight, sinus problems, and allergies, and he has had 11 skin cancers removed.
Once a union carpenter, Larry Duke, a 65-year-old decorated Marine, has spent the last 23 years of his life behind bars for weed. On top of the difficulties life in prison lays on the psyche, Duke suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from multiple tours in the Vietnam war. Like Knock, Duke received two life sentences without parole for a non-violent marijuana conspiracy, and was unsuccessful at appeal. According to the legal petition, Duke is the longest-serving nonviolent marijuana prisoner in the nation.
William Dekle, 63, is also a former U.S. Marine serving two life sentences without parole, 22 of which he has already completed in a Kentucky penitentiary. Despite the depressing possibility that he will die behind bars, Dekle has participated in more than 30 prison courses, including counseling other inmates. Before his conviction, Dekle was a pilot certified in commercial and instrument flying, as well as multiengine aircraft. Now he suffers from a chronic knee injury. He is supported by his wife, two daughters, and grandchildren, who call him “Papa Billy.” Dekle’s relatives would ensure a stable home environment should he be granted clemency, the legal petition said.
Charles “Fred” Cundiff is a 66-year-old inmate who has served more than 20 years of his life sentence for marijuana. Before the marijuana arrest that changed his life forever, he worked in construction, retail and at a plant nursery. In prison, he worked for Unicor (Federal Prison Industries) for 12 years before his declining health interfered with his ability to work. Battling skin cancer, eye infections, and severe arthritis in his spine, Cundiff uses a walker. While the legal petition makes no mention of family, it says he is regularly visited by “friends from his youth.”
1- Aaron Greene, in February 2012, Greene and Gliedman were named in a police report after an officer saw Greene injecting heroin in a parked car near Washington Heights. When the officer approached the car, the complaint says Greene warned, "I have a . . . rifle in the trunk." He was sentenced to five months behind bars. Gliedman and baby daddy Aaron Greene allegedly kept explosives, an arsenal of weapons, and a mayhem-making library at their W. 9th St. home with titles such as “Booby Traps” and “A Do-it-Yourself Submachine Gun.”
2- Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice (DOJ) explained at a press conference, “HSBC is being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight – and worse – that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries… The record of dysfunction that prevailed at HSBC for many years was astonishing.”
U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch added, “HSBC’s blatant failure to implement proper anti-money laundering controls facilitated the laundering of at least $881 million in drug proceeds through the U.S. financial system…”
As punishment, HSBC was assessed a fine of 1.9 billion — about four weeks’ worth of its pre-tax profits. No bank officials who were caught red-handed will be prosecuted or imprisoned.
Take responsibility, apologize, pay a fine for your drug crimes and then call it a day. Go home to family who will forgive you for doing business with so-called “narco-terrorists.” Prison time? Felony record? Asset forfeiture? No. Not for drug trafficking executives of laundromat/banks that are “too big to fail” or jail.
Buzzer sound.
you get it thou right? funny, obama = o-bomb-o, bombing like 6 countries and actually it should be BOehNER, bec he seems like a dick... thats okay i realize some people cant swallow it
Yes, I do.
Sincerely,
briLLIanTDEluxE
or perhaps... briDIOTaSSHOLEnERDluSHSUx ?
Jeez, sorry for the derailment. Bad on me!
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
git out yer guns and go shoot some antique cans! always gets me my ya ya's! yeehaw!
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
...
I heard it's because they are 'Job Creators'... I suppose, 'Drug Lord' can qualify as a job classification, can't it?
Hail, Hail!!!