To big to fail

I think everybody in US know about Wachovia Bank, this is one of the biggest banks in US. People like their service, there products and their beautiful promotional material.

Well now Bloomberg report tells us that Wachovia services not only law abiding citizens but also drug smugglers, and the most outrageous thing is that Wachovia helped move money to Mexico in a quantity of $378.4 billion between 2004-2007, this money helped drug dealers to buy 4 plains with which they transported around 22 tons of cocaine.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.

Over the years Wachovia was not the only bank that helped move drug dealers dirty money, other banks like: Bank of America, HSBC Holding (in Europe), Citigroup and others.

Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory. That’s like having a “Permanent-get-out-of-jail” card in Monopoly Game.

Well of course all those banks that were caught with the stinky socks paid a lot of money to their government. American Express Bank paid $14 mil for money laundering in 1994, but looks like money laundering is like a drug because in 2007 they had to pay again a $65 million check to US government. Now Wachovia’s new owner Wells Fargo (they bought Wachovia in 2008) will have to pay $160 millions in penalties and fines and nobody goes to jail, now that looks fair (sarcasm) .

In my opinion, this is the smallest price that Wachovia could pay for their dirty profits from $378.4 billion of Mexican cartels money, $160 million is like 0.042% out of that money that they laundered for Mexican drug dealers. Once again we can see that the ones who control the money controls everything and even government can’t do anything without hurting those who gave away the control over their money.

Source: [www.bloomberg.com]