We get regular audits of our work by an outside company. The exact auditing company rotate to ensure no incompetence/cronyism hides something.

As the article states:

> Indeed, prior to 2010 when the OCC cited the bank for many AML deficiencies—including a huge backlog of unreviewed accounts and failure to file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs)—for the previous six years the agency failed to take any enforcement action against the bank

In the end if an organization is too big to be controlled and to take responsibility it shouldn’t exist and be broken up.

Maybe at the country level they were happy with the transaction fees, but I would be surprised if it went any higher than that and certainly wouldn't be worth the risk.

I don't believe that's how it works at all. If you read, for example Drug Cartels Do Not Exist by Oswaldo Zavala, you'll see that this money is fundamental to how global finance operates. Drug money provided the necessary liquidity to keep the world finance system from crashing in '08. It's the main event, not a sideshow.

HSBC was founded to finance the Opium wars in China in the 19th century. Let's be adults here, the world's biggest banks aren't letting drug trade profits, the world's most lucrative trade, simply fall to small fries. They own it.

Global size of FX market: $7.5 trillion per day

It's not small money, but it's not that big compared to financial markets.

Going off a UN report from the 90s, the illicit drug trade is similar to international trade in oil and gas—that's the order we're talking about. Remember this is a commodity, so it's a bit misleading to compare it the flow of money in foreign exchange markets.

UNDCP Technical Series Number 6:ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF DRUG ABUSE AND ILLICIT TRAFFICKING.

When you move this kind of money, you don't just go to branch and ask "to speak to someone". Usually you know someone from bank who can arrange that's needed.

And they know. And you know they know. And they know you know they know. So usually it's very clear.

There is no ethical concerns at this money volume at any bank, that's I can say for sure. It's only matter of risk/reward, with potential risks coming from regulators. For talented bankers who know how to structure businesses in middle, it's a no-brainer.

Doesn't just apply for drug cartels but for any sort of money.

And yea, 900m is something they have been caught with. Pretty sure actual number is substantially different.

That's probably true as well. Someone hears someone say in bar that their controls are lax, or someone in a bank is coerced into helping a cartel etc.

And don't get me wrong - this is still Very Bad that this happened, but it happened due to control and process cock-ups, not as a conscious desire to pursue a new business opportunity.

Ask yourself what certainties you, yourself, would want if you decided to use your job to conduct significant fraud. Then imagine you could get all of them because you're an insider to the system, you can write the laws, pay off the right officials, blackmail the lowly functionaries, etc.

It's not a new business opportunity—HSBC was founded to finance the Opium Wars in China! They know how to do this. The real question is why let us see, why let something like this become public news. As always, the answer can be found by starting with the question, Who benefits? and then following the money from there.

Your description is in line with what I've read—there's hardly a smoking gun, scruples are almost totally absent, this is very serious business.

The risk is spread throughout the entire milieu of bankers, central bankers, cartel heads, cartel lawyers, etc. A similar model to the revolving door in DC. Capitalism itself tends toward cartelization, which is what allows the power elite to move freely about in a mutually assured destruction kind of way. If everyone is guilty, no one is guilty and we're in a pact to maintain that.