As HSBC executives apologise to the US Senate for laundering drugs money,
the fact is that nothing changes.
“Steal a little,” wrote Bob Dylan, “they throw you in jail;
steal a lot and they make you a king.”
These days, he might recraft the line to read:
deal a little dope, they throw you in jail;
launder the narco billions,
they’ll make you apologise to the US Senate.
The stark truth is that the cartels’ best friends are those people in pin-stripes who,
after a rap on the knuckles, return to their golf in Connecticut and drinks parties in Holland Park.
The notion of any dichotomy between the global criminal economy and the “legal” one is fantasy.
Worse,
it is a lie.
They are seamless, mutually interdependent
– one and the same.
.