HSBC’s Biggest Allies: Obama & Loretta Lynch

Swiss authorities, led by Attorney General Olivier Jornot and prosecutor Yves Bertossa, raided the Geneva offices of HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) SA Wednesday morning, as part of their criminal probe into “aggravated money laundering,” by the bank and by “persons unknown,” according to the London Guardian and Telegraph.

“We are looking for anything and everything we can find, documents and files,” prosecutors said, noting that the action came in response to recent Swiss Leaks revelations on the bank’s illegal activities, facilitating tax evasion by wealthy clients, among other things.

News of the raid spread across the globe, with London’s Evening Standard noting that “the fact that the raid is over allegations of money laundering will send shivers through Europe’s largest bank.”

Those shivers are indeed being felt in London, where Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs agency (HMRC) is scrambling to defend itself against charges that it failed to act on evidence of HSBC’s illegal activities.

HSBC’s illicit reputation is well known, as is the protection from criminal prosecution the bank has enjoyed for decades from the top levels of the U.S. and UK governments. However as the utter bankruptcy of the transatlantic financial system, including the EU itself, becomes more and more difficult to deny, the days of implicit political and financial bailouts banks like HSBC have enjoyed since their inception, may be numbered. And the dismissal of Obama’s Attorney General nominee, Loretta Lynch is a good place to start.

In the U.S. there is now speculation as to whether the Swiss raid and revelations of the extent of HSBC’s illegal behavior might lead to a reopening of the case against HSBC for moving billions of dollars in Mexican drug cartel money through the U.S. financial system. In 2012, Obama’s Attorney General nominee, Loretta Lynch, and the Department of Justice gave HSBC a slap on the wrist for its crimes, in the form of a $1.9 billion fine, and a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA).

In her capacity as Attorney of the Eastern District of New York, Loretta Lynch blatantly protected HSBC from serious prosecution in 2012, after the bank admitted to facilitating money-laundering by Mexican drug cartels, and helping clients evade U.S. taxes and sanctions.

In a WND.com interview with the HSBC whistleblower John Cruz, who had exposed HSBC’s dirty operations, in which Cruz states that Lynch never even contacted him for his information, Cruz said,

“Nobody from the U.S. attorney’s office in New York ever contacted me, despite numerous attempts that I made to get the documentation I had of HSBC illegal money-laundering to federal prosecutors.”

Lynch’s stonewall is even more extreme, given the information Cruz had already provided to Federal agencies. Two years before, in 2010, Cruz’s attorney handed over documentation to a supervisor of the DHS’s Homeland Security Investigators, but in early 2012 DHS even denied that it had met with Cruz’s attorney. Not surprisingly, nothing came of the DHS investigation. In 2012, Cruz got the same runaround from the Internal Revenue Service.

Lynch’s DOJ knew of other HSBC criminal activity going back to 2007. As The New York Times gingerly put it earlier this month:

The documents had been procured by an HSBC whistleblower in 2007. They were shared with authorities in at least France, Spain, Britain, and the United States.

Covering the same record, Matt Taibi, in the Feb. 9 Rolling Stone, states:

As EIR noted in its 2012 coverage of the HSBC money-laundering, EIR’s Dope, Inc. first reported in 1978, that HSBC, then called the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, functioned as the central bank for the opium and heroin trade of the British Empire and its East India Company, dating back to 1865, when the HongShang was founded.

HSBC’s Mexican Dope Cartel Money; How Much of It Went to Obama’s ’08 Campaign?

HSBC: Flagship Bank Of Britain’s Dope, Inc.

LaRouche’s Campaign Vs. Dope, Inc. & HSBC

HSBC Funding Was Behind the Terror in Bangladesh, Mumbai