Standard Chartered Bank Hong Kong Branch
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Recent documents filed in a U.S. federal court say major U.K. banks Standard Chartered Bank Helped finance sanctioned Iranian entities and terrorist groups, while evidence of this was ignored by U.S. authorities.
Headquartered in London Standard Chartered, which mainly serves clients in emerging markets, has previously been overtaken by Fines totaling $1.7 billion After pleading guilty in 2012 and 2019 to violating sanctions against Iran and other blacklisted countries.
The bank denies conducting transactions for any group designated as a terrorist.
New court documents from whistleblower Julian Knight, a former Standard Chartered bank employee, say U.S. officials lied and denied that he gave them evidence of more serious wrongdoing at the bank. Knight claims officials then applied in 2019 to dismiss his whistleblower case against the bank, calling it “baseless” to protect the bank. He has now asked a U.S. federal court in New York to reinstate the case.
Knight, who led Standard Chartered’s transaction services unit from 2009 to 2011, was one of two whistleblowers who provided confidential bank statements to U.S. investigators in 2012 and 2013. Evidence of the sanctions, including violations from 2007 onwards, when the bank said it had stopped any transactions with Iran.
Knight’s court filing said the U.S. government had committed a “tremendous crime” against the legal system by denying he had provided “smoking gun evidence” that Standard Chartered “facilitated billions of dollars in banking transactions for Iran, numerous international terrorist groups and front lines.” Fraud”.Companies that serve these groups,” said one person Report Hosted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Some of the evidence showed the bank’s clients included front companies for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran-linked entities in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Germany and other countries, court documents said. .
Two whistleblowers claim that U.S. authorities investigating Standard Chartered “made false statements to the court in 2019 in order to deny their (Knight and his colleagues’) request for a whistleblower reward.” BBC reports.
Authorities, including FBI agents, said the whistleblower’s claims “did not lead to the discovery of any new … violations.” A court later dismissed the case as “baseless.” CNBC has reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice for comment.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ report said Knight’s latest allegation that the U.S. government “lied that it conducted a ‘lengthy, expensive and substantive investigation’ into his claims or that it had ‘full knowledge’ of the deal he was offering, “He just lied and concealed the truth.”
In response to CNBC’s request for comment, a Standard Chartered spokesperson described Knight’s court filing as “another attempt to use fabricated claims against the bank, following previous unsuccessful attempts” and said “the false allegations behind it Authorities have fully investigated the claims and said they are “baseless” and do not show any violation of U.S. sanctions. “
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