HSBC got away with paying a fee of under $2 billion for not monitoring $60 trillion worth of wire transfers. They made a profit of something like $15 billion during that year, so their fines barely even touched their profits.
The moral of the story here is if you're going to launder money, you should launder a whole shitload of it. Because then you only have to pay a tiny percentage worth in fees. If you don't launder enough, you'll end up broke and in prison.
Imagine if this kind of logic applied to other crimes. You could have a sex slave operation with one prostitute and get caught and go to jail for the rest of your life. But if you run a massive sex-slave industry with tens of thousands of slaves (children for the hell of it), and made $10 billion a year, you'd occasionally get a fine of 10% of your profits that year and be allowed to continue on as if nothing happened...?
> if you're going to launder money, you should launder a whole shitload of it
Yes. Or rather, if you're going to launder money, make sure you're making healthy campaign contributions, hiring ex-politicians and their staffers as lobbyists, oiling the great lobbying machine, etc...
The moral of the story here is if you're going to launder money, you should launder a whole shitload of it. Because then you only have to pay a tiny percentage worth in fees. If you don't launder enough, you'll end up broke and in prison.
Imagine if this kind of logic applied to other crimes. You could have a sex slave operation with one prostitute and get caught and go to jail for the rest of your life. But if you run a massive sex-slave industry with tens of thousands of slaves (children for the hell of it), and made $10 billion a year, you'd occasionally get a fine of 10% of your profits that year and be allowed to continue on as if nothing happened...?