Jake's View | Banking scandals expose regulators who distort due process

Here we are at bank No7 with Standard Chartered, and no individual banker has been held criminally responsible, and that's a shame.

It would help if we had charges on which to hold individual bankers criminally responsible. Evil-doing doesn't quite cut it and holding money that may have come through Mexico isn't actually a crime.

The big offence, of course, is dealings with Iran. Here is a country that has seen its two immediate neighbours (Iraq and Afghanistan) invaded by the US military, that has nuclear-armed powers on all sides (Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel), and that thus sees some defence advantage in a nuclear arsenal.

This is a crime and London-based banks are guilty of it. A newly created New York State regulator says so. Like that other hero, Superman, he can see through walls and across oceans. His knowledge of the doings of banks in London is total.

His knowledge of the doings of banks in other states of the US, unfortunately, is less than total. Most American banks are state chartered and their state regulators won't have outsiders looking in. They see no future for themselves in undermining their state financial industries.

We thus revert to a principle of law - innocent until proven guilty. Supervision of state banks is kept light, and guilty doings are not found. These banks are therefore innocent, white as newly laundered bedsheets, emphasis on laundry. Hello, Nevada. Hello, Arizona.