The bank that grew fat on cocaine

Martin Vander Weyer

IT WOULD BE HARD TO INVENT a more contrasting pair of protagonists for a thriller plot than Stephen Green and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán. Green — tall, soft-spoken, cerebral, an Anglican priest in his spare time, later a trade minister in the House of Lords — was chairman from 2006 to 2010 of HSBC, the UK-based bank which grew to be the world’s largest during his tenure. Guzmán, now incarcerated for life in one of America’s most secure prisons, was the small, cunning and murderous head of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, one of the world’s most sophisticated ventures in the distribution of cocaine, heroin and other narcotics. Remarkably, Guzmán was one of Green’s biggest HSBC customers. In a very indirect sense, of course. But the plain truth — told in…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2023

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