At the end of 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice imposed a fine of 1.9 billion dollars on HSBC, almost 10% of the bank’s earnings. That was a cost for supporting drug cartels with money laundering and breaking the sanctions imposed on Iran and Libya. It became clear then, that no one will be held responsible personally for the bank’s crimes. In response to that, prosecutors have begun to justify their decision saying that they do not want to make decisions that could shake up the financial system.
Q4 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
Therefore, people started to asking questions: “What will happen with the former HSBC employees involved in crimes? How their punishment could hit the financial system?”
We go even further and ask: How is it possible that the largest banks’ employees avoid the punishment? Is it related to one or the other bribe or intimidation? Or perhaps, the theory about the world government consisting of untouchable bankers is quite real?
Let’s try to get closer to these topics based on the 2012 HSBC investigation.
FSA Intervention
When the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating HSBC, the conviction of criminals seemed to be a feasible scenario. However, during the investigation, Attorney General Eric Holder provided information about the lawsuit to the Financial Service Authority. Thereafter, they provided the information to the British Minister of Treasury, George Osborne.
It was pivotal move. In response, Osborne sent a letter to Ben Bernanke (head of the FED on that time). Also, the copy of the letter was received by Timothy Geithner (The Secretary of the Treasury on that time). The Osborne letter has contained a warning that the HSBC probe could cause problems for economic and financial stability in Europe and Asia. No wonder then that after receiving the letter by Bernanke and Geithner, in the HSBC investigation was used a “prosecution deferred agreement”, which can be translated as remision of guilt if the bank will meet some prosecutor’s requirements.
Moreover, somehow the Financial Stability Authority had the access to the information about the HSBC investigation. At this point, it is worth to note that when the Standard Chartered Bank was investigated, the U.S. Department of justice refused to provide any information.
In order to answer the question why HSBC has been treated in such a favored manner, it is necessary to look inside the Osborne letter.
The letter deals with 2 important issues, which we quote below:
No. 1 “Adair Turner, Mervyn King and I want to be sure that British financial institutions are compliant with the global standards and principles” – Osborne theoretically write as a representative of the British government, and refers to the global principles. Why? We write about it below.
No. 2 “HSBC as a systemically important financial institution” – the abbreviation is G-SIFIs (Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions).
The list of “systemically important financial institutions” was created by the Financial Stability Board(FSB) about a year before the Osborne letter. In reality, these financial institutions are the entities which are untouchable and operate above the law. Looking back into 2011, the list was consisting a dozen of banks, including HSBC. However, the mentioned above Standard Chartered Bank was not included there.
If we have a look on the website of FSB in order to check their members, we realize that the FSB list consists of 6 entities from UK and US. Below, we provide 5 of them together with their directors:
Bank of England – Mervyn King
Financial Services Authority – Adair Turner
HM Treasury – George Osborne
Federal Reserve System – Ben Bernanke
US Departament of Treasury – Timothy Geithner
As we can see, during that time 5 important politicians who have been members of FSB have seen the letter. Thus, Financial Stability Board is really important part of the game. Let’s have a closer look on this institution:
Its official website shows that the FSB is designed to detect weaknesses in the current financial system, and then oversee and improve the resolution of emerging problems.
The report of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) of 2012 indicates that the FSB consists of three committees, one of which is called the “Standing Committee on Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation”. From another quote we can clearly conclude how the cooperation between FSB and different countries’ representatives looks like, which we quote below:
“In the case of countries that do not show sufficient efforts to comply with the standards, the FSB starts confidential talks with representatives of local authorities to improve the situation.”
This type of action is familiar with the behaviour of the so called “Economic’s Hit Men” described in the John Perkin’s book.
Abuses and lies of FSB
During the time when the FSB was announcing the members of the banking cartel (also known as “too big to fail” banks), it was governed by Mario Draghi. Sometime later, he was succeeded by Mike Carney, the only foreigner in charge of the Bank of England. It is worth to add that both of them are former employees of Goldman Sachs.
We mention about Carney because, nowadays millions of people believe in everything he says. In 2016 he was interrogated in regards to the HSBC case. He was asked whether he was discussing the case with Osborne but he was not able to answer. Afterwards he compared the U.S. Department of Justice to the “black box” meaning that his work and decisions are free from outside influences. He knew that it was not true.
In addition, 3 months after the HSBC investigation, the U.S. Senate was interested in whether the Department of Justice asked the Treasury Department what could happen after the conviction of bankers. David Cohen during his interrogation stated that there was such an inquiry but the Treasury Department refused to give specific answer. In reality, no one from the Treasury Department gave the answer on that question. However, it was done by Timothy Geithner the U.S. Treasury Secretary in the behalf of the FSB. According to Jesse Eisinger (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), Geithner warned the deputy prosecutor general about the potential damages which could be triggered because of the HSBC probe.
Above situation was described in order to show how the system actually works. People like Geither or Carney act more like a “double agent”. Most people think that politicians work only for their countries. However, in the same time they are serving for the banking cartel, whose protection is their priority. Thanks to that they provide themselves the impunity about which we write below.
FSB as a BIS assistant
At this point it is worth to recall a few things about the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the most powerful financial institution in the world. Majority of the BIS activities cannot be seen in the news. The fact is that in Switzerland, BIS is something like a separate state. Its territory cannot be violated even by the Swiss police. Moreover, the BIS headquarters regularly hold meetings during which the heads of central banks consult the future moves about the monetary policy.
Let’s go back to the FSB. From the documents of the International Monetary Fund we can get that FSB has no legal peronality and it does not exist. The documents also says that “The FSB should go step by step towards institutionalization, and until then it can use the immunity as an association operating under the BIS”
If that current status of the FSB is real, it means that its benefits are tremendous. Thus, all of the BIS immunities are available to FSB, and these are:
- jurisdictional immunity – ensures impunity regardless of the area of its activities. In the case of the US it means to being on par with the president who is the only one person in the US with this privilege.
- immunity regarding documents – which was again set against the American law. In the US, even President Nixon was not allowed to hiding the recordings. In the case of HSBC however, the bank chose the documents which wanted to show to investigators. Therefore, the prosecutors had to lie on TV that everything is going well. Ultimately, the former HSBC vice president said in an interview that after he gave the documents to investigators, they said that they will pass them back in order to give the papers to the bank’s lawyers and they will check them. As you can see, HSBC was supposed to x-ray itself.
- immunity regarding assets – wherever the assets of “systemically important banks” are located, no executions are possible, e.g. takeover or freezing of these assets.
- immunity for employees – a key point. This immunity ensures the impunity for bankers. In addition, former employees are also outlaw. This part of the BIS document answers the pivotal question “Why it is not possible to convict former employees of the HSBC? Here is the answer. If they belong to the banking cartel – they are protected. With only one exception – if the banker acts in his own benefit or interest, then he can be convicted. It is the only punishment created by BIS for potential rebels.
To conlcude, as we can see the decision of the U.S. Department of Justice had nothing to do with the concerns about the stability of the financial system. In fact, it was related to the powerful banking cartel, which can influence decisions of any government.
Conclusions:
- The creation of something like “systemically important banks” was possible thanks to the previous financial crisis. Such an extreme events that frighten the crowds allow the authorities to make changes and accustom the society to a completely new order. In this case, it was used to fully protect selected banks. What will the next crisis be used for then? Let’s have a hope that it won’t be used to limit the cash transactions or implement totalitarian control programs like it happens in China.
- Once a year, the list of untouchable banks is expanded. You can be sure that BIS/FSB requires full obedience from the management of banks who wish to join the cartel. Ultimately, such people will do everything to gain the status of “outlaws”. This means that the heads of BIS can easily influence any events in any country using banks as their servants.
- The theories about the creation of the World Government look a bit different when people realize that the United States cannot punish a particular bank because it belongs to the international cartel.
- Let’s think for a moment – if the FSB is able to control western governments, then the western media even more. Thus, is the image of some countries from the east created in an objective way? Or maybe they select which countries in the east are good and which are bad.
- The president of the Bank of England Mike Carney also has his symbolic part in this story. Some people have been praising the BoE actions during the recent crisis. However, in reality the priority for Carney are the interests of the banking cartel but not the good of British citizens. This is another example confirming that people like Carney have to build foundations for the crisis first, and then when it happens, act as heroes (and in the same time make changes to protect the position of banks. A similar hero was Timothy Geithner, who admitted some time after the crisis that the US aid programs were aimed at saving banks, not the citizens.
This article was based mainly on the YouTube movie titled “All the Plenary’s Men” which is based on the documents of BIS, IMF, DOJ and many more.
Attachment
Below we publish a full, up-to-date list of banks that stand above the law (just like their current and former employees). We advise you to not short sell any of them, unless you want to take a short-term speculative position.
Dexia
Bank of China
Banque Populaire
BNP Paribas
Crédit Agricole
Société Générale
Commerzbank
Deutsche Bank
Unicredit
Mitsubishi
Mizuno
Sumitomo Mitsui
ING
Santander
Nordea
Credit Suisse
UBS
Barclays
HSBC
Lloyds
Royal Bank of Scotland
Bank of America
Bank of New York Mellon
Citigroup
Goldman Sachs
JP Morgan
Morgan Stanley
State Street
Wells Fargo
Royal Bank of Canada
Groupe BPCE
China Construction Bank
Agricultural Bank of China
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited
Article by Independent Trader
