Too Big to Jail

HSBC and the Banking Scandal of the Century

Chris Blackhurst

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English

Macmillan
10 October 2023

True crime; Drugs trade & trafficking; Corporate finance; Banking

'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 entwined with one of the most barbaric groups of gangsters on the planet?

Too Big to Jail is an extraordinary story, brilliantly told by writer, commentator and former editor of The Independent, Chris Blackhurst, that starts in Hong Kong and ranges across London, Washington, the Cayman Islands and Mexico, where HSBC saw the opportunity to become the largest bank in the world, and El Chapo seized the chance to fuel his murderous empire by laundering his drug proceeds through the bank. It brings together an extraordinary cast of politicians, bankers, drug dealers, FBI officers and whistle-blowers, and asks what price does greed have? Whose job is it to police global finance? And why did not a single person go to prison for facilitating the murderous expansion of a global drug empire?

By: Chris Blackhurst
Imprint: Macmillan
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 197mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 26mm
Weight: 236g
ISBN: 9781529065077
ISBN 10: 1529065070
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 10 October 2023
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Author Website: https://chrisblackhurst.media/

Chris Blackhurst is an award-winning business writer and commentator. He is a former editor of The Independent and for ten years was City editor of the Evening Standard. Before that he worked for The Sunday Times on its business pages and Insight investigative team. He covered Westminster for several years for The Independent, and for twenty years conducted the main interviews in Management Today magazine with senior business and financial figures. His journalism has appeared in many of the world's major publications. Too Big to Jail is Blackhurst's first book.

Reviews for Too Big to Jail: HSBC and the Banking Scandal of the Century

Packed with insights and details that will both amaze and appal you. This is the inside story of how the City of London really operates and if it doesn't make you angry, you need to check your pulse -- Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland and Butler to the World The sheer hubris, greed and arrogance of bankers is laid bare in shocking, and at times hilarious, detail. Blackhurst takes them on and pricks their bubble of self-congratulatory entitlement -- Andrew Neil, broadcaster and former editor of The Sunday Times Full of extraordinary revelations. Epic story-telling about a shocking scandal. Read this! -- Iain Martin, author of Making It Happen Blackhurst's tale would make an exciting novel. But alarmingly, this is a true story, carefully researched and told with gusto. -- Baroness Patience Wheatcroft, former editor of The Sunday Telegraph