Whether the case ultimately panned out does not change the a priori evaluation of the case. It's better to have a do-gooder whistleblower than malfeasant employee looking for a plea deal as your star witness, but even that is better than trying to build a case just out of circumstantial evidence, which is what they had against e.g. HSBC.
If anything, the prosecutor's loss highlights why prosecutors haven't gone after the big banks. If they can't even get a conviction with multiple loan department employees pleading guilty and testifying on behalf of the prosecution, imagine going after a big bank, where the link between the wrongdoing and the central command will be far more tenuous.
I find it very hard to find fault with the bank here. It appears that a single loan officer made illegal moves and upon first discovery the bank did what they could to both contain the issue and notify the authorities.
The malfeasant employee seems to have joined the prosecution against the bank only to relieve the pressure on himself and to distract attention (when in my opinion he should have been the one charged and the bank should have been commended on their handling of the case).
The other employees may have been negligent but do not appear to be malicious, if it wasn't for the alert eye of the director this could have gone on for a lot longer.
All in all this case seems to be a net loss for everybody.
What HSBC did went - as far as we can see from the outside - right to the top and required a lot more than a rogue employee.
It does not look like a single "rogue employee" but multiple employees in the department. Of course that doesn't mean anyone at the top is to blame, but one can see why the prosecutor would draw that inference.
> What HSBC did went - as far as we can see from the outside - right to the top and required a lot more than a rogue employee.
What about HSBC went to the top? The only thing from the indictment that was a policy from the top was not classifying Mexico as a "high risk" country for money laundering controls purposes. There wasn't even a "single loan officer . . . [who] joined the prosecution against the bank only to relieve the pressure on himself" willing to testify that a higher up made that classification decision with specific intent to profit from money laundering.
If there had been a witness like Mr. Yu in the HSBC case, the government would've settled for a lot more than it did.
I suspect the real reason is the quote at the bottom of the page:
"Vance — and by extension, New York’s entire state and federal regulatory regime — gain credibility for their tough stance against an allegedly sketchy institution. The mere indictment builds political capital, regardless of whether there’s any factual basis for their claims."
In other words: this case was brought to Enhance Vance's stature, not because of the gravity of the case.
Yu's supervisor was as far as I understand the case the only other person that should have faced charges, the rest is either operating on instruction from Yu or simply did not know about it and did the right thing once the situation came to light.
Yu's supervisor should have probably caught this in an earlier stage, it went on for too long.
If anything, the prosecutor's loss highlights why prosecutors haven't gone after the big banks. If they can't even get a conviction with multiple loan department employees pleading guilty and testifying on behalf of the prosecution, imagine going after a big bank, where the link between the wrongdoing and the central command will be far more tenuous.