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Comment by joosters | Hacker News Reader

A conspiracy theorist might note that all the recent huge banking fines have been against non-US banks. Could it be that US prosecutors are much keener to investigate foreign banks and do not look as closely at banks back home? Or are the US banks miraculously less corrupt?

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1. February 2012 $25 billion: Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America.

2. November 2013 $13 billion: JPMorgan Chase

3. January 2013 $11.6 billion: Bank of America

4. March 2014 $9.5 billion: Bank of America

5. June 2011 $8.5 billion: Bank of America

6. January 2014 $1.7 billion: JPMorgan Chase

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Top-10-fines-imp...

Interesting, but it does not settle the question as to whether the US justice system is inconsistent based on the nationality of the corporation. This list might carry some weight if it discussed the fact that some of these are settlements, and how did these compare to the size of the infraction.

Given that there is a serious and ongoing discussion about the lack of criminal proceedings, but that there are other kinds of very much lesser processes, it is legitimate to be concerned that financial institutions, and their employees and directors, are getting off too lightly. Then, in light of successful prosecutions against foreign corporations, the original question is legitimate.

Actually, the pattern of national bias is well established from well before the last great meltdown. And given that, these foreign prosecutions make one wonder why there have been so few against US banks.

Perhaps this is splitting hairs, but those charges are either the result of settlements from complaints brought by their customers, or are the fallout from the market crash and general marketwide mortgage mis-selling.

In other words, no-one needed to seek out hidden wrongdoing by these banks, their own customers were complaining about their behaviour, or there was conspicuous obvious malfeasance. (I'm not trying to downplay the banks' bad play and criminality in these events though). It would have been difficult not to act on these things (at least, I'd like to think so!)

The spate of huge fines against the non-US banks has been direct investigations that haven't been broadly obvious from the outside, i.e. someone had to go digging.

Man I would give an arm and a leg to see some jail time in that list. Aren't corporations people supposedly?

Hard to imprison a corporation, though.

Just use the Prisoner Work-Experience model -- for every hour of work the company does pay them ¢19. So if they have 1000 employees, the company gets $19/h to split amongst itself. Its the same rate we would pay prisoners who are on work detail.

I love it.

I would've thought it hard for a corporation to practice a religion too.

The U.S. has historically had more robust anti-corruption laws and has been more aggressive about extending them to conduct of U.S. businesses operating abroad. For example, it is illegal under U.S. law for U.S. companies to bribe foreign officials, while it is not necessarily illegal under European laws, or not as aggressively prosecuted. U.S. banks have more experience operating under this regime and are more familiar as to how to toe the line. European companies are more likely to trip up, either because they have less experience with compliance or because they think they are less likely to get caught.

Sadly, you're wrong with your conspiracy theory.

It's sad because it's not that they don't look closely. They do, but they condone - publicly.

HSBC "spent years committing serious crimes, involving money laundering for terrorists", and there's been no penal prosecution, with the public (let me repeat: public) justification that prosecuting it penally would lead to a too big loss for the economy.

There has been some discussion previously. Links here:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/12/hsbc-pr...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageo...

update: added links

But HSBC isn't a US bank, it's UK-based. So the pattern still holds.

US banks have been prosecuted for anti-money laundering failures too. For example, in 2010, Wachovia (now part of Wells Fargo) paid $160m to settle charges relating to anti-money laundering failures. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870405900...

Last year, the Federal Reserve took enforcement action against Citi for poor anti-money laundering controls. http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2013/03/26/fed-hi...

That's exactly what the French government alleges: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/02/french-officials-twis...

  At the heart of the French government’s campaign is the
  concern that American prosecutors have created a two-tiered
  system of justice: one in which American and British banks
  escape criminal charges and the other that forces BNP to
  plead guilty to sanctions violations and pay a record fine.

It is hard to reconcile this with the fact the governement just rejected a settlement of $12B from Bank of America, and is seeking $17B. They just settled with JP for $13B.

European banks are getting fined for Illegal tax shelters and violating sanctions, and US banks are getting hammered on mortgage fraud.

I don't see a conspiracy.

From TFA: "It is a cautionary tale of how European banks, spotting a lucrative business opportunity that American rivals shunned, opened their doors to countries under sanctions and ultimately exposed their reputations to the stain of criminal cases."

How do we know that American banks shunned it? They too could have been disguising transactions and hiding illegality. It's not like US banks are known for avoiding 'lucrative business opportunities' that aren't entirely legal. Perhaps the whistleblowers required haven't come forward, or perhaps the investigators just haven't looked too hard...

>"How do we know that American banks shunned it?"

We can never prove this, as an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I noticed that clear trend as well.

Just off the top of my head... I think that foreign banks do not have local political weight to throw around because they do not give many political donations and are not part of the revolving door of political appointments from the banking industry to the various regulatory agencies.

US Banks are defacto part of the Federal Reserve which a quasi dept of the government.

So any "investigation" into a US bank is like an Internal Investigation, and we all know how those work... can you say coverup?

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