HSBC is paying $2 billion, or 5 weeks' worth of its profit

US regulators continue to find weaknesses in the way HSBC Holdings tries to prevent money laundering, according to people familiar with the matter, even after the British bank was forced to pay nearly $2 billion in penalties and invested millions in increasing its compliance.

The deferred prosecution agreement was reached in December 2012 and was approved Monday. The settlement was seen as a record amount to resolve charges that the bank failed to stop billions of dollars in drug money from flowing through the bank from Mexico.

Under the terms of the deal, the Justice Department agreed to suspend criminal charges against HSBC and its US subsidiary for five years if the bank agreed to pay the penalty.

When announcing the settlement, HSBC Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver said: "The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organization from the one that made those mistakes."

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