In 2012, HSBC admitted failures that allowed at least $881 million belonging to Mexican and Colombian drug cartels to pass through the US financial system, alongside hundreds of millions in transactions involving sanctioned countries.
The bank paid approximately $1.9 billion, but no senior executive went to prison. Prosecutors were warned that criminally prosecuting HSBC could damage the wider financial system. In other words, it was effectively considered too big to jail.
This was not an isolated banking scandal. We have seen reckless lending contribute to the 2008 financial crash, taxpayers funding bank rescues, LIBOR manipulation, industrial-scale PPI mis-selling, sanctions breaches and repeated money-laundering failures. The banks pay fines, treat them as a business expense and carry on, while ordinary people lose homes, businesses and access to banking—and face devastating consequences over the smallest suspected irregularity.
Yet we are encouraged to obsess over allegations involving Nigel Farage. Those allegations should be properly investigated, but political-funding controversies have affected parties across the political spectrum for years.
Focusing all public anger on one politician is a convenient distraction from the much bigger reality: powerful banks and institutions can cause damage on a scale that affects millions everyday, yet meaningful personal accountability is non existent. |  |
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