Where a citizen would face certain jail sentence for such an offense, executives of HSBC received no such punishment for over a decade of money laundering and financing drug cartels and terrorist groups. Instead, the company has been fined a relatively paltry amount for the egregious extent of their crimes.
On the heels of the giant banking scandals that helped bring about the Great Recession, the government falsely promised a change in the handling of financial crimes. Instead, citizens continue to be second-class to the financial elite.