Standard Chartered yesterday faced new allegations that it enabled billions of dollars in banking transactions for Iran as well as terrorist groups including Hamas.
The claims contained in US court documents were described as “fabricated” by the lender.
But they come after Standard Chartered previously paid huge fines to settle claims over poor money laundering controls and sanctions breaches.
Now, whistleblowers are attempting to reopen a case against the London-based, Asia-focused bank with what they claim is newly discovered evidence.
Standard Chartered avoided prosecution in the United States in 2012 after the Government – and then Chancellor George Osborne – intervened on its behalf.
New allegations: Standard Chartered avoided prosecution in the United States in 2012 after the UK government (and then-chancellor George Osborne) intervened on its behalf.
But whistleblowers now accuse the US government of committing a “colossal fraud” in the New York court over the thoroughness of its investigation into alleged sanctions violations in 2012 and 2013.
In a court document filed last week, based on a new examination of documents, they claim that Standard Chartered “facilitated many billions of dollars in banking transactions for Iran, numerous international terrorist groups, and the front companies of those groups.”
It names Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and Al Qaeda among the groups involved. The whistleblowers, who filed the claim under the name Brutus Trading, said they have identified transactions worth £77bn between the bank and clients linked to Iran.
“With the help of forensic data analysis, Brutus was only recently able to reveal or ‘unmask’ countless illegal transactions that were hidden deep within the bank’s electronic spreadsheets, which Brutus turned over to the government,” the document reveals.
They seek to reverse the previous dismissal of their claims and reactivate the lawsuit. But Standard Chartered said it was “another attempt to use fabricated claims, following previous failed attempts”.
A spokesperson for the bank said: “The false allegations underlying this have been completely debunked by US authorities who carried out a thorough investigation into the claims and said they were “baseless” and did not show any violation of US sanctions.”
In 2019, Standard Chartered agreed to pay more than £800 million to UK and US authorities for financial transactions that violated sanctions against Iran.
Some of the violations occurred after the bank settled similar charges in 2012, when it had paid US authorities more than £400m for illegally moving money through the US financial system on behalf of clients in Iran, Sudan, Libya and Myanmar.
