> Watch: This CEO will come back in a few years with another scheme
If some of these allegations [1] are credible, he and everyone in his orbit are going to jail.
If some of these allegations [1] are credible, he and everyone in his orbit are going to jail.
If he's financing terrorism, a broad extradition treaty goes from being a blocker to a diplomatic hurdle. (To be clear, I'm not suggesting kidnapping. Governments can negotiate one-off extraditions for high-value targets.)
It also appears he was knowingly financing Hamas and Russia, which makes the list of potential enemies (and people who would prefer him dead to compromised) substantial.
It looks like a combination of ongoing criminal trials, home confinement and probation [1].
This case isn't putting them in jail. But they're going to jail. Literal terrorist financing.
No one from HSBC went to jail, either.
There wasn't evidence it was willful. Looking the other way gets you fined. Texting your colleagues about laundering money shows intent, the most difficult part of most financial crimes to prove in court.
> Bernhardt alleges that HSBC evaded the OFAC filter beginning in the early 1990s and continuing through 2009. HSBC Bank UK implemented procedures to help sanctioned entities access and benefit from U.S. financial services. For instance, such entities would include a “cautionary note” in their transactions, such as “care sanctioned country,” “do not mention our name in NY,” or “do not mention Iran.” Based on these notes, HSBC Bank UK would manually scrub all references to Iran or a sanctioned entity, which would allow otherwise illegal transactions to pass through to HSBC Bank US. This system allowed HSBC Bank US to “process[] thousands of ‘repaired’ transactions worth billions of dollars.” HSBC Bank UK would also use “cover payments,” or bank-to- bank transfers, to avoid disclosing the identity of its customers.