Too Big to Jail: HSBC and the Banking Scandal of the Century – Blackhurst Chris (2023)

Packed with insights and details that will both amaze and appal you' - Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland and Butler to the World. From journalist Chris Blackhurst, Too Big to Jail unveils how HSBC facilitated mass money laundering schemes for brutal drug kingpins and rogue nations - and thereby helped to grow one of the deadliest drugs empires the world has ever seen. While HSBC likes to sell itself as 'the world's local bank' - the friendly face of corporate and personal finance - it was one decade ago hit with a record US fine of $1.9 billion. In pursuit of their goal of becoming the biggest bank in the world, between 2003 and 2010, HSBC allowed El Chapo and the Sinaloa cartel, one of the most notorious and murderous criminal organizations in the world, to turn its ill-gotten money into clean dollars. How did a bank, which boasts 'we're committed to helping protect the world's financial system on which millions of people depend, by only doing business with customers who meet our high standards of transparency' come to facilitate Mexico's richest drug baron? And how did a bank that as recently as 2002 had been named 'one of the best-run organizations in the world' become so…