Cocaine, HSBC and the Guardian

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This article appeared in the Guardian today. It is exquisitely ironic. There appears to be a cocaine crisis in the City. I wonder why that might be?

Well, for a start, as everyone now knows, HSBC paid $1.9 bn in the US to avoid a prosecution for laundering millions of dollars for the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico. One of the world’s largest exporters of cocaine to Europe. The prosecution of HSBC was avoided with the help of George Osborne, David Cameron and the Financial Services Authority.

The Guardian in its turn makes a great deal of money from HSBC, and Stuart Gulliver told the Treasury Select Committee that the Guardian was the largest recipient of HSBC advertising revenue of all digital news outlets. This appeared in the Guardian accounts for 2014 (it has since been deleted)

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Not abashed by the connections, the article that appeared today carried an advertisement at the top of the page for Fisher Investments. Fisher Investments are HSBC’s largest shareholders. Win,win all round. Who’s got the charlie?

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