[Proziam]

The real key here is knowingly. Large banks have had a slew of "scandals" whereby they've been caught moving many billions of dollars for evil organizations the rest of us would go to prison for donating to. How many times do these organizations have to get caught for it to be handled in a fashion comparable to mere mortals?

I say "scandals" because by some miracle it never seems to be a particularly big deal in the media.

[phtrivier]

It depends on what you mean by "big deal". The ICIJ published a series of damning articles in relatively-big-deal papers as late as yesterday. (1)

Aguably, the news is shadowed by other, more immediate topics - it would be interesting to see how it would have been received in a non-2020-ish year.

(I remember Panama Papers where a bigger deal, for example, probably because you could name famous people while in headlines.)

[1] https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/

[Proziam]

> Aguably, the news is shadowed by other, more immediate topics - it would be interesting to see how it would have been received in a non-2020-ish year.

This is what frustrates me. You can find these scandals happening way before 2020. The fact that it isn't common knowledge is distressing.

[2016] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/deutsche-banks...

[2011] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico...

[2010] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-06-29/banks-fin...

[1980] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/06/07/1...

If the banks' involvement in such activities was promoted to the same extent as the political noise that currently dominates, we might have actually have made some improvement in human and drug trafficking between the 80s and now.