There is no evidence anyone at HSBC was willfully assisting or complicit in money laundering. The fines are for weak controls that failed to detect money laundering.
Still, it is a mere slap on the wrist that is guaranteed to have no permanent repercussions to deter such behavior. It's a clusterfuck and I don't see a solution emerging without both the war on drugs ending and multi-year incarceration becoming mandatory for financial crimes.
> Disabling
Or alternatively, just not enabling tougher controls. There's no evidence, or indeed suggestion by prosecutors, that controls were deliberately set low to deliberatly faciliate money laundering.
The only people making cash deposits of this size, in Mexico especially, are drug cartels. The HSBC employees at the branch knew what this money was.