Standard Chartered bank 'in $250bn scheme with Iran'

BBC News, 6 August 2012 

Standard Chartered has been accused
 of undermining US sanctions against Iran

Standard Chartered bank illegally "schemed" with Iran to launder as much as $250bn (£161bn) for nearly a decade, a US regulator says.

The NewYork State Department of Financial Services said that the bank hid 60,000 secret transactions for "Iranian financial institutions" that were subject to US economic sanctions.

It labelled Standard Chartered a "rogue institution".

HSBC was recently accused by the US Senate of allowing money laundering.

HSBC has set aside $700m to deal with any fines and penalties arising from those allegations - making the Standard Chartered situation far larger.

The New York State Department of Financial Services threatened to revoke the licence of the US unit of Standard Chartered, which is headquartered in London but makes most of its money in Asia.

Other schemes found

The regulator said that its nine-month probe, which involved looking through more than 30,000 pages of documents, including internal Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) emails, showed that the bank reaped "hundreds of millions of dollars in fees".

"SCB's actions left the US financial system vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes, and deprived law enforcement investigators of crucial information used to track all manner of criminal activity," it said.

The probe also said that it uncovered evidence with respect to what are apparently similar schemes to conduct business with other countries under sanctions - Libya, Myanmar and Sudan.

"Investigation of these additional matters is ongoing," it added.

In the 27-page complaint, the New York State Department of Financial Services said that Standard Chartered showed "obvious contempt for US banking regulations" and pointed to an email reply from a bank executive director to a New York branch officer.

"Who are you [Americans] to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're not going to deal with Iranians," the complaint quotes the director as saying.

Standard Chartered said: "The group is conducting a review of its historical US sanctions compliance and is discussing that review with US enforcement agencies and regulators.

"The group cannot predict when this review and these discussions will be completed or what the outcome will be."

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Standard Chartered Bank accused of scheming with Iran to hide transactions