In the world of anti-bribery/anti-corruption and anti-money laundering enforcement, just as is true in about any other domain between the heavens and hades you can think of, it certainly is good to have friends at the top. That well-known maxim was demonstrated yet again recently when it was revealed that the U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne had intervened directly with the U.S. government during the investigation of money laundering violations by the U.K. bank HSBC. Rather amazingly or, perhaps simply through coincidence, this intervention obtained the result it sought to achieve.
How all this came about was initially noted in a U.S. House of Representatives report issued last week about the decision by the Justice Department not to bring criminal charges against the bank for its money laundering violations. Apparently the Justice Department had been considering criminal charges against the bank for the bank’s laundering of cash for drug lords and terrorists as well as being a conduit for countries under U.S. economic sanctions such as Iran (at the time).
