Wednesday, August 15, 2012

MONEY LAUNDERING BY BRITISH BANK: Another Bank Debacle

The Law Firm of Charles Jerome Ware, P.A.: Still here. Still committed. Still here to make a difference.

British mega-bank, STANDARD CHARTERED, has agreed to pay New York state's top banking regulator, the 10-month old New York Department of Financial Services $340 million to settle claims that it laundered hundreds of billions in tainted money for IRAN and lied about it to regulators.

The New York regulator (DFS) had taken on the mega-bank alone when it charged that Standard Chartered schemed for nearly a decade with IRAN to illegally hide from U.S. bank regulators over 60,000 banking transactions involving IRAN and worth over $250 billion.

The 150-year old bank's problems are not over, though. It is now pursuing a so-called "collective settlement" with other U.S. regulators --- including the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the Department of Justice --- who have investigations going against the London-based bank for its questionable money-laundering transactions worldwide.

Standard Chartered has maintained that only $14 million of the $250 billion in the more than 60,000 Iranian bank transactions under scrutiny from January 2001 to the end of 2007 violated federal regulations.

Many U.S. authorities have suspected, and suggested, that Iranians have been using mega-banks such as Standard Chartered, ING bank, Barclays, etc., to finance terrorism and nuclear weapons development.

[www.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/business/standard-chartered-settles-with-new-york-for-laundering; uk.reuters.com/article/2012/08/15/uk-standard-chartered-prob; www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/15/us-standard-chartered-reaches-$340-billion-settlement-over-Iran; www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-15/new-york-settles-standard-chartered-probe-for-$340-million; www.guadian.co.uk/business/2012/aug/14/standard-chartered-agrees-$340m-settlement; www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/14August2012/standard-chartered-agrees-settlement]

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