HSBC Settles Money-Laundering Probe for Record $1.92B Settling charges it gave drug lords and terrorists access to the U.S. financial system, British banking giant HSBC (HBC) agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion on Tuesday and accepted responsibility for inadequate anti-money laundering compliance. The settlement had been in the works for months and allows the largest European bank to move past the issue. HSBC said the agreement includes a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice as well as a global resolution with all other U.S. government agencies probing HSBC money-laundering compliance. We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again," HSBC CEO Stuart Gulliver said in a statement. The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organisation from the one that made those mistakes. HSBC also said it anticipates reaching a settlement with the U.K."s Financial Services Authority "shortly." In July a U.S. Senate panel accused London-based HSBC of turning a blind eye to apparent money laundering by a number of groups, including sanctioned countries like Iran and Sudan, alleged terrorists and Mexican drug cartels. At the time HSBC apologized for its past mistakes and set aside $1.5 billion to pay for a potential settlement. HSBC and the DOJ pointed out a number of changes made by the bank over the past few years to address its compliance issues, including ramping up spending on anti-money laundering by nine-fold, boosting its compliance staff ten-fold, spending more than $290 million on remedial issues and backing out of 109 correspondent relationships for "risk reasons." The agreement with the DOJ lasts five years and calls for an independent monitor to evaluate HSBC's progress in fully implementing new measures. Still, some believe HSBC should have suffered a harsher penalty for its money-laundering lapses. "The HSBC settlement makes a mockery of the criminal justice system," Jimmy Gurule, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and former undersecretary for enforcement at the Treasury Department, said in an email. "The message sent by the U.S. Department of Justice is that if you are going to engage in large-scale money laundering for Mexican drug cartels, make sure and do it within the scope of your employment working for a bank because you won't be prosecuted regardless of the egregious nature of your criminal conduct," Gurule said. U.S.-listed shares of HSBC rose 0.74% to $51.92 Tuesday morning, leaving them up about 36% so far this year. The announcement comes a day after the U.S. reached a $327 million settlement with Standard Chartered for illegal transactions. That deal also included a deferred prosecution agreement.