Holder’s DoJ Overruled Advice to Prosecute HSBC, Report Says
- Republican lawmakers say Holder misled Congress in testimony
- Deferred prosecution deal provoked ‘too big to jail’ criticism
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Top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder, ignored advice from their prosecutors that HSBC Holdings Plc should be charged criminally in 2012 for violating anti-money laundering laws, according to a report compiled by Republican members of the House Committee on Financial Services.
Holder was concerned that a guilty plea for HSBC could put it out of business, the report says, setting off a crisis in the financial system, which was only then recovering from the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008. So he decided to resolve the HSBC case by levying a fine but deferring prosecution, it says. The report’s findings were published earlier on Monday by The Wall Street Journal.