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Notes

1. Saviano, Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia. In 2012, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on the Camorra as one of four key transnational organized crime groups (the others being the so-called Brothers’ Circle (Russia), the Yamaguchi-gumi (Yakuza, Japan), and Los Zetas (Mexico). United States Department of the Treasury, David Cohen (Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence), Treasury Notes Blog: ‘Combating Transnational Organized Crime’, 24 February 2012 (accessed 20 September 2016).

2. In 2005, for example, it was reported that the Mexican Ministry of Defence feared that a brutal organisation of hit men composed of corrupt Mexican military officers had forged an alliance with Kaibiles deserters in an attempt to wrest control of drug-trafficking routes to the USA. Thompson, “Mexico Fears its Drug Traffickers Get Help from Guatemalans.”

3. On this, see Mejia and Restrepo, “Why is Strict Prohibition Collapsing? A Perspective from Producer and Transit Countries.”

4. Open Society Foundations, “Undeniable Atrocities: confronting crimes against humanity in Mexico: Executive Summary.”

5. BBC News, “HSBC was fined $1.9 billion for money laundering for the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel.” Lanny Breuer, then head of the US Justice Department’s criminal division, stated that Sinaloa operatives would ‘deposit [with HSBC] hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows’. Breuer asserted that HSBC had been guilty of ‘stunning failures of oversight – and worse that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries and to facilitate hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries’. Ed Vulliamy, ‘HSBC has form: remember Mexico and laundered drug money’, The Guardian, ‘HSBC: Opinion’, 15 February 2015. At the time the fine was imposed some disquiet was expressed in certain quarters that HSBC had been fined rather than prosecuted. But, if US authorities had pressed criminal charges, HSBC would have lost its US banking licence in the US. This, it was feared, may well have damaged the bank irreparably and led to severe disruption in the global banking system. In order to avoid prosecution HSBC signed up to a five-year agreement with the Department of Justice which entailed the installation of an independent body to oversee more stringent internal controls. Stuart Gulliver, the chief executive of HSBC, stated: ‘We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we [apologise] again.’ Dominic Rushe (New York) and Jill Treanor (London), ‘HSBC’s record $1.9bn fine preferable to prosecution, US authorities insist’, The Guardian, 11 December 2012. The question as whether or not to proceed with criminal charges against HSBC in 2012 reared its head again when prosecution of HSBC and a Swiss subsidiary was mooted (for tax evasion) in 2015. Ed Vulliamy, ‘HSBC has form: remember Mexico and laundered drug money’, The Guardian, ‘HSBC: Opinion’, 15 February 2015.