Standard Chartered Plc bank branch in Hong Kong
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Recent documents submitted to a US federal court claim that this is a major British bank Standard Chartered helped finance sanctioned Iranian companies and terrorist groups, and that relevant evidence was ignored by American authorities.
Based in London Standard Chartered, which primarily serves clients in emerging markets, was previously hit with fines totaling more than $1.7 billion after admitting in 2012 and 2019 to violating sanctions against Iran and other blacklisted countries to have violated.
The bank denies having carried out transactions for organizations classified as terrorists.
Recent court papers filed by former Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) employee turned whistleblower Julian Knight allege that U.S. officials lied by denying that he had provided them with evidence of far greater wrongdoing at the bank . Officials then moved in 2019 to dismiss his whistleblower case against the bank as “meritless” to shield it, Knight claimed. He has now asked a US federal court in New York to reopen the case.
Knight, who headed a transaction services division at Standard Chartered between 2009 and 2011, was one of two whistleblowers who provided confidential bank statements to US investigators in 2012 and 2013. The transaction documentation statements, he said, contained evidence of further sanctions violations, including violations after 2007, when the bank said it had stopped all business with Iran.
Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri and IRGC Aerospace Forces Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh walk during the unveiling of the “Kheibarshekan” missile at an undisclosed location in Iran, in this Feb. 9 picture 2022.
IRGC | WANA | via Reuters
Knight’s court filing alleges that the U.S. government committed a “colossal fraud” against the legal system by denying that he presented “damning evidence” that Standard Chartered “managed many billions of dollars in banking transactions for Iran, numerous international terrorist groups and the front “facilitated companies for these groups,” says a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Some of that evidence showed that the bank’s customers included front companies for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran-linked companies in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Germany and other countries, according to court documents.
The two whistleblowers claimed that US authorities investigating Standard Chartered “made false statements in court in order to obtain their own information.” [Knight’s and his colleague’s] “Whistleblower reward claim dismissed” in 2019, the BBC reported.
The relevant authorities, including an FBI agent, said the whistleblowers’ allegations “did not lead to the discovery of new … violations.” The court then dismissed the case as “unfounded.” CNBC has reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice for comment.
The ICIJ report said Knight’s latest claim was that the U.S. government “lied, that it conducted ‘a lengthy, costly and extensive investigation’ into his claims, or that it was ‘fully aware’ of the transactions he provided and had merely lied to cover it up, adding: “The government’s own statements support the latter scenario.”
In response to a CNBC request for comment, a spokesperson for Standard Chartered described Knight’s statement of claim as “another attempt to make trumped-up claims against the bank after previous unsuccessful attempts” and said that the “false allegations underlying it.” , have been thoroughly discredited by the USA”. Authorities conducted a comprehensive investigation into the claims and said they were “baseless” and showed no violations of U.S. sanctions.
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2024-06-05 08:12:35
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