U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked regulators how egregiously a bank could break laws before they’d weigh pulling its charter, citing HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) providing services to drug cartels and skirting sanctions against Iran, Bloomberg reported yesterday. “What does it take?” Warren asked a panel of banking regulators testifying at a Senate Banking Committee hearing yesterday. “How many billions of dollars do you have to launder for drug lords and how many economic sanctions do you have to violate before someone will consider shutting down a financial institution like this?” Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry and Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell explained that a charter revocation process would depend on a bank being convicted of a crime, for which Powell said the Justice Department has “total authority.” London-based HSBC settled for $1.92 billion in December and promised to fix its operations. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a March 6 hearing that criminal charges against one of the biggest banks—something that could threaten its existence—may also endanger the national or global economies. That has “made it difficult for us to prosecute” some of those institutions, Holder said.
