Top Banking Committee Democrat Reprimands Loretta Lynch For Going Easy On Wall Street

huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) sent a sharply worded letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Friday, calling on the government’s top lawyer to rescind a drug money laundering settlement with HSBC and bring criminal charges against the British financial titan’s employees.

Under the standards of Beltway etiquette, it’s a provocative move for a Democratic congresswoman in a leadership position ― Waters is the ranking member of the powerful House Financial Services Committee ― to publicly challenge a sitting Democratic cabinet member. But Waters’ letter is particularly biting for another reason: Lynch was personally in charge of the HSBC investigation that infuriated financial reform advocates in December 2012, while she was U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

“I have long criticized the apparent two-tiered American justice system that subjects low-level criminal offenders to harsh prison sentences that completely upend their lives and compromise their futures, while allowing the perpetrators of major financial crimes to be largely shielded from criminal prosecution,” Waters wrote Friday.

The HSBC deal, known technically as a deferred prosecution agreement or DPA, settled charges that the company laundered $881 million for the Sinaloa and Norte del Valle drug cartels and violated U.S. government sanctions against Iran, Libya, Sudan and other countries. The bank paid the feds $1.9 billion and no bankers were prosecuted.