Across the world, HSBC likes to sell itself as 'the world's local bank', the friendly face of corporate and personal finance. And yet, a decade ago, the same bank was hit with a record US fine of $1.9 billion for facilitating money laundering for 'drug kingpins and rogue nations'. Between 2003 to 2010 HSBC allowed El Chapo and the Sinaloa cartel, one of the most notorious and murderous criminal organizations in the world, to turn its ill-gotten money into clean dollars. How did a bank that had been named 'one of the best-run organizations in the world' become so entwined with one of the most barbaric groups of gangsters on the planet? This is an extraordinary story that starts in Hong Kong and ranges across London, Washington, the Cayman Islands and Mexico -- where HSBC saw the opportunity to become the largest bank in the world. It brings together an extraordinary cast of politicians, bankers, drug dealers, FBI officers and whistle-blowers, and asks what price does greed have? Whose job is it to police global finance? And why did not a single person go to prison for facilitating the murderous expansion of a global drug empire?