What I take from this is that you pretty much can get away with anything (including terrorism) as long as you do it from within a corporation and have enough money to pay the USA government any fine it imposes.
If it's a criminal case, you'd think they could subpoena the necessary records. It's not something to be making a plea bargain over.
Yes, but they may not be able to meet the threshold of not having a criminal case against the bank, as such thrown out without evidence that the bank was obstructing the investigation into criminal behavior for which there was significant evidence occurred at the bank.
So there can certainly be some sense where obstruction by the bank provides additional reason to believe that what is going on is criminal action by the bank, rather than merely criminal action at the bank.
> It's not something to be making a plea bargain over.
When both civil and criminal charges by the government could potentially apply to the same conduct, limiting action to civil charges is a frequent negotiating tool in seeking a settlement that achieves the objectives of stopping the conduct, imposing a penalty for the conduct, and providing access to information necessary to assess the scope of the conduct and to assure that it is, in fact, stopped.
What I think a lot of people would want to see is someone going to jail for this, hence the criminal case.
Apart from that, my sincere apologies for arguing even slightly against against jail time for the banksters.
Honestly, it almost forms a neat free market solution to corruption. A savy insurance firm should start offering Employer Corruption plans that would pay out if you lost your job due to a conviction of the company. Shadier firms would have higher insurance rates and thus would have a harder time finding employees.
If my house catches fire and I don't have insurance, I don't get a new house, even though if I didn't start the fire. If my company goes under and I don't have insurance, I don't get paid, even if I'm not the person who wrecked the company.
But I also don't understand the lack of criminal convictions. The article mentions damning internal documents that show individuals within the bank knowingly breaking the rules. Why aren't these people being charged? They shouldn't be protected simply because they were working for a large corporation.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageo...
But note that dealing with Iran, Sudan and some other countries forbiden by the US State Department is legal in many european countries.
As a French national, I have extremely little sympathy for them. Maybe they will think twice about breaking the rules next time.
If you were a skilled member of the finance industry, do you think you'd have any trouble at all finding a job elsewhere if your current company suddenly fell on hard times? Would it even be necessary, given the type of "severance package" likely to be awarded?
Do you think the people dismissed at the direction of the criminal prosecutors as part of a prosecution that also caused their employer to receive a fine nearly equal to its annual pre-tax income got generous severance packages? And, beyond that, do you think that, that the reason they left their last job -- including the condition imposed on BNP Paribas not to rehire them again even indirectly -- has no impact on the employability elsewhere in the industry?