Drug Cartels, Money Laundering, and HSBC (w/ Chris Blackhurst and Everett Stern)

This episode is about international banking, massive drug cartels, and billions in laundered money. My first guest is Chris Blackhurst, author of the book "Too Big to Jail: Inside HSBC, the Mexican Drug Cartels, and the Biggest Banking Scandal of the Century." Considering we've already witnessed a few significant banking scandals, this one stands out as particularly egregious. The book tells the story of how HSBC ignored money laundering laws and processed billions in dirty cash for notorious drug lord and murderer El Chapo in the early 2000s and into the 2010s.

One of the characters we meet in the book is Everett Stern, who was an anti-money laundering compliance officer at HSBC. Everett saw how intentionally lax HSBC's methods were for identifying and reporting suspicious activity to the government. He turned whistleblower and started sharing his story with the CIA. Everett has appeared in the Netflix documentary "Dirty Money" and has written a book about his experience called "Dark Money and Private Spies."