In announcing the deferred prosecution agreement reached with HSBC, the then US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Loretta Lynch, noted that the ‘historic agreement’ imposed ‘the largest penalty in any [Bank Secrecy Act] prosecution to date, [making] it clear that all corporate citizens, no matter how large, must be held accountable for their actions.’ That was 2012. The bank paid a then-record penalty of over $1.9 billion.

But the bank's compliance was so lacking that prosecutors insisted on an especially lengthy five year period of corporate compliance monitoring. The federal judge at the time insisted that those monitoring reports be made public, in summary form. As the reports came in, there was cause for real concern.

Citation
Brandon L. Garrett, The Public Interest in Corporate Monitorships: The HSBC Case, Oxford Business Law Blog (November 16, 2016).
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