Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person whos ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels among others and violating a host of important banking laws from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act, Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a “record” financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.
The banks laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBCs Mexican branches and “deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows.”
MORE: Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke | | Rolling Stone.