It began as a trickle but has turned into a flood. HSBC, Barclays, Wachovia, JP Morgan, and UBS have all been engulfed by waves of scandal involving, money laundering, fixing interest rates, risky trades, and rigging the money markets. The question now is – have the banks gone bad?

Last week, British NGO Global Witness published Grave Secrecy, a report on how U.K. registered companies were allegedly used to launder the profits of corruption. Hundreds of millions of dollars passed through the corporate accounts of dozens of shell companies that held bank accounts at Asia Universal Bank (AUB), the largest bank in Kyrgyzstan. Although the report is based on one concrete case of alleged corruption and money laundering in that country, its relevance goes beyond that single example.