“Attorney General Eric Holder declared Monday that no banks are too big to be prosecuted if they engage in criminal activity, while another law enforcement official said a pair of cases against major banks may culminate in guilty pleas in the near future.

“‘There is no such thing as ‘too big to jail,'” Holder declared in a weekly video message. ‘No individual or company, no matter how large or how profitable, is above the law.’

“Cases against Swiss bank Credit Suisse for helping Americans evade taxes through secret accounts and against French bank BNP Paribas (for dodging U.S. sanctions against Sudan and Iran) are expected to be resolved in the next couple of weeks, possibly with guilty pleas, said a law enforcement official who asked not to be named.

“Moving the cases to prosecution or conclusion may help Holder and the Justice Department rebut criticism that there have been virtually no prosecutions of major banks or top bank officials during the Obama Administration. However, most of that criticism has been aimed at going after those perceived as responsible for the financial meltdown in 2008 and 2009. Neither of the two cases likely to be resolved go directly to the financial crisis.

“Justice Department officials have said cases relating directly to the financial crisis have proven hard to make, though there has been occasional grumbling from insiders that officials were not being aggressive enough in going after such wrongdoing. There have been a string of successful prosecutions of high-level investment managers for insider trading, as well as an array of smaller players in the mortgage industry for mortgage fraud.”

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