[gadders]

>>When you move this kind of money, you don't just go to branch and ask "to speak to someone". Usually you know someone from bank who can arrange that's needed.

That's probably true as well. Someone hears someone say in bar that their controls are lax, or someone in a bank is coerced into helping a cartel etc.

And don't get me wrong - this is still Very Bad that this happened, but it happened due to control and process cock-ups, not as a conscious desire to pursue a new business opportunity.

[fogforthought93]

No, it's far too risky and stochastic to rely on overheard bar convos for this kind of thing. To do this kind of large-scale fraud you need to be built into the system, you need reliable methods, backstops, entire plans for fall guys and controlled demolition of your schemes.

Ask yourself what certainties you, yourself, would want if you decided to use your job to conduct significant fraud. Then imagine you could get all of them because you're an insider to the system, you can write the laws, pay off the right officials, blackmail the lowly functionaries, etc.

It's not a new business opportunity—HSBC was founded to finance the Opium Wars in China! They know how to do this. The real question is why let us see, why let something like this become public news. As always, the answer can be found by starting with the question, Who benefits? and then following the money from there.