In the second half of 2010, a senior federal prosecutor in West Virginia drafted an impassioned plea to his bosses in Washington to end infighting as multiple government agencies pursued a high-stakes investigation of HSBC Holdings Plc.
William Ihlenfeld II had been fighting a losing battle against fellow prosecutors in Washington and Brooklyn, who were jointly conducting a parallel probe into the British bank's controls over illicit transactions.
Ihlenfeld, the U.S. Attorney in Wheeling, West Virginia, said in the draft letter, a copy of which has been seen by Reuters, that there had been a breakdown in the relationship, and his office had been told to stand down in June 2010 by the Department of Justice, just as they were preparing to indict the bank for as many as 175 counts of money laundering.
An earlier mediation had failed. So for the first time in 30 years, Ihlenfeld said his office was seeking an arbitration of such a dispute.
"We have made several offers to amicably settle this dispute by dividing the investigation in a way that guaranteed the two investigations would never interfere with each other," Ihlenfeld wrote. "Despite our best effort, all of our offers have been categorically rejected. None of our proposals has even induced a counter-offer."
"As a general proposition, there is no reason why the professionals from different DOJ components cannot work together for the common good," Ihlenfeld wrote in the letter addressed to Gary Grindler, then the acting deputy attorney general. "This particular situation is no exception."
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/26/us-hsbc-idUSBRE88P06H20120926
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