This project aims to explore issues of fairness and proportionality in U.S. law through an examination of the outcome of the HSBC money laundering scandal. Federal investigators found that the bank had been laundering money for years.
U.S. Senator Carl Levin : “Due to poor AML (Anti-Money Laundering) controls, HBUS exposed the United States to Mexican drug money, suspicious traveller’s cheques, bearer share corporations, and rogue jurisdictions.”
Justice?
The bank admitted to having laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for drugs traffickers and having circumvented procedure to permit transactions with sanctioned countries including Syria, Iran and North Korea.
Yet the Department of Justice did not criminally indict the bank for fear of the failure of this key financial institution and potential detriment to the global economy. Instead it was given a $1.9bn fine; the equivalent of four weeks’ earnings for HSBC.
Rawls – A Theory of Justice
Rawls’s Theory of Justice will be used to analyse whether the Department of Justice have upheld their moral duty as a legal institution in deciding to grant the bank amnesty for its crimes on the condition of it paying a fine. His concept of justice as fairness is invaluable in my own assessment that in the light of this case, all citizens are apparently not treated as equals before the law.