As we learn more about Liberty Reserve and their alleged facilitations of money laundering the question I'll be asking myself is; Were the alleged actions of Liberty Reserve worse than the alleged actions of HSBC? HSBC got off with a fine by the US DOJ. So this question helps me to understand the real motivations behind the indictment of Liberty Reserve. Was the DOJ's motivation to actually thwart monet laundering, or was it motivated by something else like shutting down something outside of their regulatory control?
Well the settlement with HSBC was to pay a $1.9 billion fine -- it's unlikely that Liberty Reserve would be able to come up with something of that order of magnitude. Additionally, I think the prosecutors would make the case that Liberty Reserve was _primarily_ a criminal money laundering operation while HSBC was a large, multi-faceted organization which engaged in certain criminal acts.
"HSBC was to pay a $1.9 billion fine -- it's unlikely that Liberty Reserve would be able to come up with something of that order of magnitude"
That was for $60 Trillion in un-monitored transactions. The fine is very roughly ~ 1/32,000th of the total transaction dollars. Perhaps rather than shutting them down, the feds could fine them 1/32,000th of all of LR's un-monitored transaction?
This "break the law to make money and pay the fine later on" is just part of the revenue model now. Fines are not a deterrent (in fact I think they are more appropriately called "bribes"), they are considered like insurance, or rent, or banking fees. All just part of the cost of making the most profit possible.
