I'm Azeen Gureshi. This is suspicious activity inside the FinCEN files.

Episode 2. Permission Slip.

Okay, so last episode we spent a bunch of time kind of summarizing what this story is.

We talked a lot about the documents this reporting is based on, the thousands of suspicious activity reports that BuzzFeed News has gotten access to.

But this time, let's talk specifics, about one bank. thousands of suspicious activity reports that BuzzFeed News has gotten access to.

But this time, let's talk specifics about one bank, HSBC.

We've got BuzzFeed News reporters Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold back with us to tell us this story that involves money laundering and pyramid schemes and strippers,

and let's just get into it.

Here's Anthony.

HSBC became notorious for permitting a network of narco-traffickers, terror groups, and

sanctioned countries, corrupt states, to launder money, more than a billion dollars, according to one count.

In 2012, after a lengthy federal investigation, the government told HSBC, you have to knock this off.

We are here today to announce the filing of criminal charges against HSBC Bank.

The government says the bank did business with known drug lords, Iran, even banks associated

with al-Qaeda.

It was charged with violating sanctions laws by conducting business with customers in Iran,

Sudan and Cuba.

When the most ruthless of the Mexican drug cartels wanted to hide their money, they went to HSBC.

They failed to comply with the legal requirements incumbent on all U.S. financial institutions to guard against being used for money laundering.

HSBC was the poster child of a bad bank. The bank was slapped with a big fine, $1.9 billion, and an

independent monitor was installed to make sure HSBC wasn't engaging in criminal activity and

was addressing internal problems that allowed for it in the past. But even at the time,

...