Dumb Eric Holder!

[1stRambo]

Yo, the Obama Racist is alive and well!
"Eric Holder's parting shot: It's too hard to bring civil rights cases"

In an exit interview, the attorney general says his critics may be partly driven by race.

By Mike Allen

2/27/15 7:00 AM EST

Read more: Eric Holder wants lower bar for civil-rights cases - POLITICO

 

[waltky]

Holder ‘Misled Congress’ about HSBC...

Holder ‘Misled Congress’ on ‘Too Big to Jail’ Wall St. Bank
July 19, 2016 -- Former Attorney General Eric Holder “overruled internal recommendations” and “misled Congress” when the Department of Justice (DOJ) declined to prosecute HSBC Bank USA and its UK-based holding company for “serious violations of U.S. anti-money laundering and sanctions laws” involving drug cartels and foreign terrorist groups, according to a new congressional report.

The report, released last week by the House Financial Services Committee, is entitled Too Big To Jail: Inside the Obama Justice Department’s Decision Not to Hold Wall Street Accountable. The final DPA [deferred prosecution agreement] between DOJ and HSBC in 2012 contained “language that appears to insulate HSBC and its employees, officers, and directors from prosecution for illegally processing certain transactions with persons or entities designated by [the Treasury Department’s] OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control] at the time of the transaction as Specially Designated Terrorists, Specially Designated Global Terrorists, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and proliferators of Weapons of Mass Destruction,” the report stated.

The five-year DPA required HSBC to pay a total of $1.92 billion in penalties for laundering $881 million for international drug cartels through the U.S. financial system, “including proceeds of drug trafficking by the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and the Norte del Valle Cartel in Colombia,” according to the report. Under the USA Patriot Act, financial institutions are required to verify the identity of their customers, set up anti-money laundering (AML) programs and controls, and report any suspicious transactions to law enforcement. As part of the DPA, HSBC also admitted it violated the Bank Secrecy Act, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and the Trading with the Enemy Act by “illegally conducting transactions on behalf of customers in Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma—all countries that were subject to sanctions” enforced by OFAC.

As a result, the bank became “the preferred financial institution for drug cartels and money launderers,” the report noted. Yet none of the bank’s directors, officers or employees were ever prosecuted for criminal violations of federal law. “Notably, despite having to pay a record U.S. penalty in connection with the DPA, neither HSBC nor any of its executives or employees were ever prosecuted, let alone convicted for any of the serious violations,” the report points out. On March 15, 2013 Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee that while “it was difficult at times to bring cases against large financial institutions because of the potential consequences… let me be very, very, very clear. Banks are not too big to jail. If we find a bank or a financial institution that has done something wrong, if we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, those cases will be brought.”

However, internal Treasury documents obtained by the committee “reveal a very different story,” the report stated. “It is clear from internal Treasury records that DOJ’s decision to decline to prosecute HSBC was not due to a lack of evidence of HSBC’s wrongdoing.” The documents “raise very serious concerns about DOJ’s DPA deal with HSBC in late 2012—not the least of which is that DOJ declined to prosecute anyone involved in a massive breach of U.S. anti-money laundering and sanctions laws due to HSBC’s large size and ‘systemic importance’,” the report stated. A Sept. 10, 2012 letter sent to then-Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury SecretaryTimothy Geithner by the UK’s chief financial minister warned that prosecuting HSBC “could lead to [financial] contagion.”

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