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Comment by justincormack | Hacker News Reader

And the law makes the executives responsible for implementation of this, which they clearly did not do effectively. The executives are not guilty of an anti-drug law, but a money laundering law, and the liability is pretty clear. The current maximum sentence is 5 years, although the "Holding Individuals Accountable and Deterring Money Laundering Act" is trying to raise this to 20. All these types of regulation about money laundering and bribery have executive liability.

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Please point me to the law that the executives broke that would send them to jail. Cross-reference it with the government's charges.

If you read the DOJ's side of things, HSBC is guilty of things like "we said Mexico is high-risk, HSBC disagreed and so failed to automatically monitor a bunch of transactions," in more legalistic language.

How about basic decency? You have to admit that there is a parallel here with many "everyday" drug cases, and that the punishment of ordinary people in parallel situations is drastically disproportionate to the punishment of HSBC.

It's extremely hard to send drug kingpins to jail, and these are people who are actually breaking the law.

I'm sure, however, that the US government can try to prosecute mid-level HSBC managers and maybe some random bank tellers in Jersey and Mexico and wherever. Somehow I doubt this is what the article author actually wants to happen.

"I'm sure, however, that the US government can try to prosecute mid-level HSBC managers and maybe some random bank tellers in Jersey and Mexico and wherever."

They are not even doing that. And given your view that the executives should not get done because of mid level managers being responsible, what do you think of the fact that they are not being held to account either? Or do you honestly believe that this money was laundered through HSBC with nobody at HSBC helping?

If you're a bank, your services will be used to launder money. It's guaranteed to happen. All you can do is implement controls to keep that activity below a certain threshold. And banks reasonably want to implement as few controls as they can get away with while complying with the law, because it costs them money to do so. Failure to implement sufficient controls for compliance is not tantamount to an intent to assist money laundering.

There's absolutely no parallel here to the situation of ordinary people. If you see that Joe Schmoe's bank account was used to launder money from a drug cartel, you can very reasonably infer that he intended to assist that cartel. There's no reasonable explanation that involves trying to save money or hassle on regulatory compliance issues. Those sorts of transactions don't just accidentally or incidentally happen to ordinary people.

New York State Penal Law Charge 62. DANY alleges, and HSBC Holdings admits, that its conduct, as described herein, violated New York State Penal Law Sections 175.05 and 175.10, which make it a crime to, “with intent to defraud, . . . (i) make[ ] or cause[ ] a false entry in the business records of an enterprise [defined as any company or corporation] . . . or (iv) prevent[ ] the making of a true entry or cause the omission thereof in the business records of an enterprise.” It is a felony under Section 175.10 of the New York State Penal Law if a violation under Section 175.05 is committed and the person or entity’s “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/hsbc/dpa-attachment-a.p...

Starting in the first para http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/hsbc/dpa-attachment-a.p..., the DOJ says they have violated the Bank Secrecy Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act which has punishments including imprisonment.

The Bank Secrecy act encapsulates hundreds of pages of law and regulations. Which part are you talking about?

You can't just link a law and say "it says somewhere here someone can go to prison for some reason, so I'm sure that bank executives should go to prison." The Wikipedia article's blurb about prison does not seem to cover HSBC's conduct, but it's also hopelessly vague.

The DOJ themselves said HSBC is in violation, therefore the point is made without the need for us lay readers to know the exact part.

???

The Bank Secrecy Act carries with it an enormous amount of different regulations and different laws and different penalties. The exact part is what you need to make your "point". If you can't produce it, no point has been made.

The DOJ hasn't bothered to produce any reason to throw executives in jail, and I bet you can't either. Blithe self-righteousness is not a reason. A vague reference to a multi-hundred-page set of laws and regulations is not a reason.

Ok, thanks for participating in our conversation

The DOJ hasn't bothered to produce any reason to throw executives in jail

New York State Penal Law Sections 175.05 and 175.10

edit - 175.10, which HSBC have admitted guilt to, is a class E felony in NY, which apparently has sentencing guidelines of up to four years in prison with a minimum of one year.

That could be real or it could be posturing. That's why we have a court system - to hash these kinds of things out.

It's not at all uncommon for prosecutors to say things like that and then not file charges because they know they can't get a conviction.

I am busy right now coding to go through in detail, but here [1] is an example of someone who was imprisoned under the BSA for "conspiring to fail to file currency transaction reports and failing to have effective AML and compliance programs", which certainly applies to HSBC.

[1] http://compliance.saiglobal.com/community/news/item/4420-che...

No, HSBC didn’t disagree. They initially agreed, then /executives/ at the bank said “this will reduce profitability, so we need to change our position”.

They are very much at fault.

We don’t need to cross-reference anything. You should be disproving things. Why? Because HSBC admitted guilt and liability.

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