By AGENCIES
STANDARD Chartered Plc (STAN) conducted $250 billion of transactions with Iranian banks over seven years in violation of federal money laundering laws, a New York regulator said in an order warning that the firm’s U.S. unit may be suspended from doing business in the state.
Standard Chartered earned hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for handling transactions on behalf of Iranian institutions that are subject to U.S. economic sanctions, New York’s Department of Financial Services said yesterday.
The London-based bank, which generates almost 90 percent of its profit and revenue in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, was ordered by the regulator to hire an independent, on-site monitor to oversee operations in the state.The bank said in a statement that 99.9 percent of its transactions with Iran complied with U.S. Treasury regulations and that the total value of transactions that weren’t in compliance was less than $14 million.
Standard Chartered Plc. may lose its license to operate in New York state, according to the New York Department of Financial Services. Photographer: Jerome Favre/Bloomberg
When the head of the bank’s U.S. unit warned his superiors in London in 2006 that Standard Chartered’s actions could expose it to “catastrophic reputational damage,” he received a reply referring to U.S. employees with an obscenity, according to the order.
“Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Iranians?” a bank superior in London said, according to the New York regulatory order.
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