HSBC is one of the world’s largest and most powerful financial institutions with offices on five continents, including in Australia. It likes to spruik its financial might and global reach. Behind the corporate gloss, it has a far less attractive reputation. The bank has been at the centre of several of the biggest financial scandals uncovered this century.
“Affiliates of drug cartels were literally walking into bank branches with hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of US cash… that didn’t happen once, it didn’t happen twice, it happened systematically over the course of about a decade.” Former US Deputy Federal Prosecutor
HSBC, or the Hong Kong & Shanghai banking Corporation has been implicated in a raft of illegal activities, from money laundering for the mafia, to enabling tax evasion and currency manipulation.
“How many billions of dollars do you have to launder for drug lords before somebody says, ‘We’re shutting you down’”? US Senator
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/banksters/9747234During the GFC we discovered that some corporations were "too big to fail". Now we are discovering that some corporations are "too big to prosecute".
Given that Australian governments seem to be at the mercy of their corporate donors are we seeing the beginning of a Corporatocracy?