ThanQ baker
'Someone pick out what we shall dig
We are just enough to keep it a good circle'
HSBC wins OK of record $1.92 billion money-laundering settlement
A federal judge has approved HSBC Holdings Plc's record $1.92 billion settlement with federal and state investigators of charges that it flouted rules designed to stop money laundering and thwart transactions with countries under U.S. sanctions.
While noting "heavy public criticism" of the settlement, which enabled HSBC to escape criminal prosecution, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, New York, called the decision to approve the accord,
"easy, for it accomplishes a great deal."
Gleeson ruled on Monday after more than six months of review, rejecting arguments by the U.S. government and HSBC that federal judges lacked "inherent authority" over the approval or implementation of so-called "deferred prosecution agreements."
The settlement, announced December 11, 2012, included a $1.256 billion forfeiture and $665 million in civil fines.
It resolved charges accusing HSBC of having degenerated into a "preferred financial institution" for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, money launderers and other wrongdoers through what the U.S. Department of Justice called "stunning failures of oversight."
HSBC acknowledged compliance lapses, including a failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, and conducting transactions on behalf of customers in,
Burma
Cuba
Iran
Libya
Sudan,
…which were all subject to 'U.S. sanctions.'
As part of the settlement, HSBC agreed to tie executive bonuses to meeting compliance standards, improve the internal sharing of information, and retain a compliance monitor.
The latter role is being filled by Michael Cherkasky, a former prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney and former chairman of the New York State Commission on Public Integrity.
JUDGE "NOT A POTTED PLANT"
HSBC's $1.92 billion payout was the largest U.S. penalty against a bank, topping a $780 million penalty imposed in 2009 against Swiss bank UBS AG for aiding tax evasion.
A spokesman, Rob Sherman, said HSBC has since 2011 taken "extensive" steps to help thwart financial crime.
"While we are making good progress, there is much more to do," he said.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch in Brooklyn declined to comment.
The deferred prosecution agreement, known as a DPA, lasts for five years, and prosecutors may indict the bank if it violates the terms.
Gleeson said, "much of what might have been accomplished by a criminal conviction has been agreed to in the DPA," whose administration he will supervise.
He noted having received requests from the public to reject the agreement because it did not hold HSBC criminally liable. He also read numerous editorials and columns suggesting, as one put it, that HSBC was "too big to indict."
Gleeson, nonetheless, said "significant deference" was owed to the Obama administration in deciding not to press an indictment.
"A pending federal criminal case is not window dressing. Nor is the court, to borrow a famous phrase, a potted plant," he wrote. "As long as the government asks the court to keep this criminal case on its docket, the court retains the authority to ensure that the implementation of the DPA remains within the bounds of lawfulness and respects the integrity of this court."
The case is 'U.S. v. HSBC Bank USA NA et al,' U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York,
Understand the REAL OWNERS of this WORLD
But not for much longer for Q, Trump and all GOOD guys..
I know many people have a great deal of difficulty comprehending just how many wars are started for no other purpose than to force private central banks onto nations, so let me share a few examples, so that you understand why the US Government is mired in so many wars against so many foreign nations.
There is ample precedent for this.
The United States fought the American Revolution primarily over King George III's Currency Act, which forced the colonists to conduct their business only using printed bank notes borrowed from the Bank of England at interest.
After the revolution, the new United States adopted a radically different economic system in which the government issued its own value-based money, so that private banks like the Bank of England were not siphoning off the wealth of the people through interest-bearing bank notes.
"The refusal of King George 3rd to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, was probably the prime cause of the revolution." – Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father
But bankers are nothing if not dedicated to their schemes to acquire your wealth, and know full well how easy it is to corrupt a nation's leaders. Just one year after Mayer Amschel Rothschild had uttered his infamous,
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws",
…the bankers succeeded in setting up a new Private Central Bank called the First Bank of the United States, largely through the efforts of the Rothschild's chief US supporter, Alexander Hamilton. Founded in 1791, by the end of its twenty year charter the First Bank of the United States had almost ruined the nation's economy, while enriching the bankers. Congress refused to renew the charter and signaled their intention to go back to a state issued value based currency on which the people paid no interest at all to any banker.
This resulted in a threat from Nathan Mayer Rothschild against the US Government,
"Either the application for renewal of the charter is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war." Congress still refused to renew the charter for the First Bank of the United States, whereupon Nathan Mayer Rothschild railed,
"Teach those impudent Americans a lesson!
Bring them back to colonial status!"
Financed by the Rothschild controlled Bank of England, Britain then launched the war of 1812 to recolonize the United States and force them back into the slavery of the Bank of England, or to plunge the United States into so much debt they would be forced to accept a new private central bank.
And the plan worked. Even though the War of 1812 was won by the United States, Congress was forced to grant a new charter for yet another private bank issuing the public currency as loans at interest, the Second Bank of the United States. Once again, private bankers were in control of the nation's money supply and cared not who made the laws or how many British and American soldiers had to die for it. Once again the nation was plunged into debt, unemployment, and poverty by the predations of the private central bank, and in 1832 Andrew Jackson successfully campaigned for his second term as President under the slogan, "Jackson And No Bank!"
True to his word, Jackson succeeds in blocking the renewal of the charter for the Second Bank of the United States.
Gentlemen!
I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country.
When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families.
That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin!
You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!".
Andrew Jackson, shortly before ending the charter of the Second Bank of the United States. From the original minutes of the Philadelphia committee of citizens sent to meet with President Jackson (February 1834), according to Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels
Shortly after President Jackson (the only American President to actually pay off the National Debt) ended the Second Bank of the United States, there was an attempted assassination which failed when both pistols used by the assassin, Richard Lawrence, failed to fire.
Lawrence later said that with Jackson dead, "Money would be more plenty."
Of course, the public school system is as subservient to the bankers' wishes to keep certain history from you, just as the corporate media is subservient to Monsanto's wishes to keep the dangers of GMOs from you, and the global warming cult's wishes to conceal from you that the Earth has actually been cooling for the last 16 years.
Thus is should come as little surprise that much of the real reasons for the events of the Civil War are not well known to the average American.
When the Confederacy seceded from the United States, the bankers once again saw the opportunity for a rich harvest of debt, and offered to fund Lincoln's efforts to bring the south back into the union, but at 30% interest. Lincoln remarked that he would not free the black man by enslaving the white man to the bankers and using his authority as President, issued a new government currency, the greenback.
This was a direct threat to the wealth and power of the central bankers, who quickly responded.
"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce.
It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."
The London Times responding to Lincoln's decision to issue government Greenbacks to finance the Civil War, rather than agree to private banker's loans at 30% interest
In 1872 New York bankers sent a letter to every bank in the United States, urging them to fund newspapers that opposed government-issued money (Lincoln's greenbacks).
"Dear Sir:
It is advisable to do all in your power to sustain such prominent daily and weekly newspapers… as will oppose the issuing of greenback paper money, and that you also withhold patronage or favors from all applicants who are not willing to oppose the Government issue of money.
Let the Government issue the coin and the banks issue the paper money of the country…[T]o restore to circulation the Government issue of money, will be to provide the people with money, and will therefore seriously affect your individual profit as bankers and lenders."
Triumphant plutocracy; the story of American public life from 1870 to 1920, by Lynn Wheeler
"It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that."
Triumphant plutocracy; the story of American public life from 1870 to 1920, by Lynn Wheeler
"Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power, and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are in favor of, forslavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care for the laborer, while the European plan, led on by England, is for capital to control labor by controlling the wages.
THIS CAN BE DONE BY CONTROLLING THE MONEY."
Triumphant plutocracy; the story of American public life from 1870 to 1920, by Lynn Wheeler
Exactly. All joining are footsoldiers in a war they don't even know exist. I'm sure they wont be told when/if degree 33 either.
But sure they get some connections and one hand shakes the other right. But still……
It is time for something new. You know it, I know it, Q knows, Trump and others. But that's coming later.
Been 90% mason posts last hour or longer.
Totally get it anon, excuse chit chat but I don't think it makes any difference right now. See you on the other side