“HSBC, or the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, traces its origins to 1865 and its early success to the opium trade. The bank has grown substantially over the past two decades – it now has nearly fifty million customers – and it has acquired a reputation for being less than scrupulous, even by the loose standards of international banking. In 2012, a U.S Senate investigation concluded that HSBC had worked with rogue regimes, terrorist financiers, and narco-traffickers. The bank eventually acknowledged having laundered more than $800 million in drug proceeds for Mexican and Colombian cartels. Carl Levin, the Michigan lawmaker who chaired the Senate investigation, said that HSBC had a “pervasively polluted” culture that placed profit ahead of due diligence. In December 2012, HSBC avoided criminal charges by agreeing to pay a $1.9 billion penalty. The company’s CEO, Stuart Gulliver, said that he was “profoundly sorry” for the bank’s transgressions. No executives faced penalties.”