Standard Chartered Bank shares plunge on laundering charges

Shares of Standard Chartered have tumbled despite the bank denying allegations that it illegally "schemed" with Iran to launder money.

Shares in London fell 16.7%, about as much as its Hong Kong stock dropped.

The New York State Department of Financial Services said the UK-based bank laundered as much as $250bn (£161bn) over nearly a decade.

It said the bank hid transactions for "Iranian financial institutions" that were subject to US economic sanctions.

The regulator said that Standard Chartered had hidden 60,000 such secret transactions.

However, the bank denied the allegations, saying that it "strongly rejects the position or portrayal of facts as set out in the order" issued by the regulator.

'Not a full picture' Continue reading the main story

Standard Chartered

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The US regulator labelled UK-based Standard Chartered a "rogue institution" and ordered the bank to "explain these apparent violations of law" from 2001 to 2010.

It accused Standard Chartered of falsifying payment directions by stripping the message of unwanted data that showed the clients were Iranian, replacing it with false entries.

"It provided step-by-step, wire-stripping instructions for any payment messages containing information that would identify Iranian clients," the complaint said.

The regulator also said that it would hold a formal hearing over the "assessment of monetary penalties". The bank, which currently only operates in the US in New York, has also been threatened with having its New York banking licence revoked.

The regulator also pointed the finger at consultancy firm Deloitte, suggesting it could have aided Standard Chartered in its alleged deception.

Deloitte had "intentionally omitted critical information" in a report, it said.

Deloitte responded by saying its financial advisory service division "performed its role as independent consultant properly and had no knowledge of any alleged misconduct by bank employees. Allegations otherwise are unsupported by the facts."

Account freeze
 

Standard Chartered also said the order issued by the US regulator did not present "a full and accurate picture of the facts".

It said that it had conducted a review of its transactions, primarily those relating to Iran for the period between 2001 to 2007, and had given regular updates to the US authorities on the results of the investigation.

"As we have disclosed to the authorities, well over 99.9% of the transactions relating to Iran complied with U-turn regulations," the bank said.

"The total value of transactions which did not follow the U-turn was under $14m."

The so-called U-turn transactions are those started outside the US by non-Iranian foreign banks that pass through the US financial system on the way to other non-Iranian foreign banks.

To ascertain whether these transactions are permitted or not under current regulations, US clearing banks use the wire-transfer messages they get from the banks involved.

If the banks do not have enough information, they are supposed to freeze the assets.

Senior management were also said to have codified their illegal procedures in formal operating manuals, including one labelled "Quality Operating Procedure Iranian Bank Processing".

Penelope Lepeudry, managing director of Kroll Advisory Solutions, a consulting firm specialising in financial investigations, told the BBC that "if the allegations are confirmed, this is a very serious development".

"The regulators are not going to be merely convinced by a statement from the bank - they need to see the details," she said.

Other schemes found
 
The regulator said it had also uncovered evidence with respect to what are apparently similar schemes to conduct business with other countries under sanctions - Libya, Burma and Sudan.

"Investigation of these additional matters is ongoing," it added.

Who is Standard Chartered?

• Standard Chartered is headquartered in London and its chief executive and chairman are based in the UK capital
• Its roots are in Asia; the Chartered Bank was founded by Royal Charter and opened in Bombay, Calcutta and Shanghai in 1858
• Standard Chartered Bank was formed in 1969 through the merger of Standard Bank of British South Africa and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China
• It currently makes two-thirds of its profit in Asia; only 10% of its operating profit last year came from the Americas and Europe
• It currently has 1,700 offices in 70 territories
• The bank made a pre-tax profit of $6.8bn in 2011
• The bank's New York office was first granted its foreign-branch bank licence in 1976

• Q&A: Standard Chartered-Iran scandal
• HSBC report: Key findings

The regulator said that its nine-month investigation, which involved looking through more than 30,000 pages of documents, including internal bank emails, showed that the bank reaped "hundreds of millions of dollars in fees".

"SCB's actions left the US financial system vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes, and deprived law enforcement investigators of crucial information used to track all manner of criminal activity," it said.

'Staggering cover-up'
 
In numerous emails going back as far as 1995, Standard Chartered's lawyers advised on ways to go about circumventing US sanctions.

In March 2001, the bank's legal adviser counselled that "our payment instructions [for Iranian clients] should not identify the client or the purpose of the payment".

By 2006, there were concerns raised about the bank's conduct in its New York branch.

The chief executive for the Americas sent an email to London saying the programme needed to "evaluate if its returns and strategic benefits are... still commensurate with the potential to cause very serious or even catastrophic reputational damage to the group".

But those warnings were ignored by senior management in London in what the regulator called a "staggering cover-up".

Among the violations of the law, the bank is accused of:

• falsifying business records
• failing to maintain accurate books and records
• failing to report misconduct to the regulator in a timely manner
• evading federal sanctions

The US Treasury, which implements the sanctions, said that it treated violations "extremely seriously". - BBC

HSBC exposed: Drug money banking, terror dealings, money laundering!

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HSBC hid '$16bn,' says a US senate
HSBC concealed more than $US16 billion in sensitive transactions to Iran, a US Senate panel says.
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The HSBC Private Bank in Geneva Source: AFP 

SHAMED HSBC Bank executives have admitted to allowing Iran, terrorists and drug dealers to launder billions of dollars.

With the international banking sector already under fire for manipulating interest rates and reckless trading, HSBC said more should have been done to prevent years of abuse amounting to tens of billions of dollars of illicit transactions.

US politicians grilled HSBC executives and US Treasury officials for failing to guard against money laundering they said benefited Mexican drug lords and terrorist networks, and for their bypassing of sanctions on Iran.

"It's pretty shocking stuff," subcommittee chairman Senator Carl Levin said.

Among the findings was the revelation that HSBC and its US affiliate concealed more than $15.67 billion in sensitive transactions to Iran, violating US transparency rules over a six-year period.

The chief compliance officer of HSBC says he is stepping down from that position after the investigation.

But David Bagley, the head of compliance for London-based HSBC Holdings, told a Senate investigations panel that he will remain at HSBC.

Bagley and other current and former executives of the bank apologised for lapses but said they weren't fully aware of illicit transactions flowing through the bank.

Senators expressed scepticism that they didn't know about problems that persisted for seven years.

"I recognise that there have been some significant areas of failure," David Bagley said at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations.

"HSBC has fallen short of our own expectations and the expectations of our regulators," he said.

While Bagley said the bank has "learned a number of valuable lessons" he acknowledged that this "clearly took far too long to resolve."

In its 330-page report, the Senate found the lender allowed affiliates in countries such as Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh to move billions of dollars in suspect funds into the United States without adequate controls.

Bagley has been the head of compliance since 2002, during the period in which the Senate investigation found that HSBC's lack of oversight allowed the bank to be used by drug traffickers and possible financiers of terrorist groups, and for other illicit purposes around the globe.

Bagley said he lacked full authority over the bank's far-flung affiliates, which each had their own compliance officer.

HSBC executives were aware of the "concealed Iranian transactions" - which stripped all identifying Iranian information from documentation - as early as 2001 but allowed thousands of transactions to continue until 2007.

A review of HSBC's use of so-called U-turn transactions, in which funds are sent into and then out of the United States through non-Iranian foreign banks, showed the bank conducted almost $US25,000 transactions with Iran.

"The vast majority of the Iranian transactions, ranging from 75 to 90 per cent over the years, were sent through HBUS and other US dollar accounts without disclosing any connection to Iran," according to the report.

The US prohibits doing business with nations it regards as enemies such as Iran and North Korea, and its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OPAC) imposes tight filters to halt potentially prohibited transactions.

Levin said the bank willfully circumvented the OFAC filters.

The senator said senior HSBC officials in London "knew what was going on, but allowed the deceptive conduct to continue."

Under the slogan The World's Local Bank, the network that began life as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation provides US dollars to HSBC banks in many countries under a procedure known as "correspondent banking."

But its compliance failures clearly spun out of control.

The report said HSBC's Mexican affiliate "transported $7 billion in physical US dollars to HBUS from 2007 to 2008 ... raising red flags that the volume of dollars included proceeds from illegal drug sales in the United States."

And it said HBUS "provided US dollars and banking services to some banks in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh despite links to terrorist financing."

Related post:
Moody's downgrades 15 major banks: Citigroup, HSBC ...

Western war on Iran soon?

Rising risk of Western war on Iran

GLOBAL TRENDS BY MARTIN KHOR

The new year is witnessing an escalation of a Western economic blockade against Iran while it has been claimed that Israel is preparing for a military strike. Can a war against Iran be avoided? 



THE risk of the world being engulfed in a new and dangerous war is increasing. In recent weeks, Iran has come under greater pressure over its nuclear programme, and the chances of this leading to military conflict have escalated.

A recent article in New York Times magazine revealed that senior Israeli leaders were preparing for a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in 2012.

The United States has intensified its initiative on trade and financial sanctions on Iran.

Republican candidates for the Presidency have been using high anti-Iran rhetoric.

And there is the possibility in a Presidential election year that the incumbent President may start a war to gain popularity.



In his State of the Union speech last week, President Barack Obama said he would take no option off the table to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Europe recently announced an embargo on Iranian oil. The European Union foreign ministers decided there would be no further oil contracts between its member states and Iran, and that existing oil delivery deals would be allowed to run only until July.

These actions are purportedly aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But Iran has insisted its research programme is for developing nuclear power, not weapons.

And there is no evidence that it is in fact developing, or intending to develop, weapons.



There is a danger of dramatic escalation of the present conflict through one of various scenarios, such as an Israeli attack on Iran (with or without United States assistance or approval) or an incident in the Persian Gulf involving Western and Iranian ships.

The US has doubled the number of aircraft carriers near the Persian Gulf, while French and British warships recently accompanied the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln into the Gulf.

These developments are creating the conditions for a slide into a catastrophic war.

On Jan 25, the New York Times carried an article – “Will Israel attack Iran?”– by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, an analyst who interviewed Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak, vice-premier Moshe Ya’alon and others.

“After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012,” wrote Bergman.

This determination to strike comes despite many difficulties, listed by Bergman.

Iran has dispersed its nuclear installations throughout its vast territory, and Israel has limited air power and no aircraft carrier.

Even if an attack were successful, Iran would be able to rebuild the damaged or wrecked sites. And Iran had declared that it would strike back if attacked.

There is of course irony and double standards in this situation.

While Israel and the West decry the consequences if Iran obtains nuclear weapons capability, it is well known that Israel itself owns many nuclear weapons.

And while Iran is often accused by the same countries of sponsoring terrorism, Iran itself has been the victim of terrorist attacks and economic and technological sabotage.

Bergman’s article provides many details of many of the covert actions taken by Israel against Iran.

The Israeli secret service Mossad was given “virtually unlimited funds and powers” to stop the Iranian bomb through a five-front strategy that involved “political pressure, covert measures, counter-proliferation, sanctions and re­­gime change”.



The moves against Iran include boycotting of financial institutions, the use of computer viruses to disrupt the operations of the nuclear project, tampering with components and the supply of faulty parts and raw materials, explosions at various facilities, and the assassination of several Iranian nuclear scientists.

The article implies that Israel has been involved in, or approves of, these actions, although it does not explicitly admit to them.

Meanwhile, Iran insists it is not intending to develop nuclear weapons, and there has been no evidence that it is doing so.

Iran’s enemies are fearful it will develop a technical capability for developing weapons as it pursues its nuclear energy programme.

Nuclear physicist Yousaf Butt, a former Fellow in the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the US National Academy of Sciences, and scientific consultant for the Federation of American Scientists, has said Iran was not doing anything that violated its legal right to develop nuclear technology.

Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is not illegal for a member state to have a nuclear weapons capability or option.



If a nation has a fully developed civilian nuclear sector, it, by default, already has a fairly solid nuclear weapons capability, and several countries that do not have weapons, do have this capability.

Meanwhile, Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service reported that several influential foreign policy figures in the US (who used to be Iraq war hawks) were speaking up against military action on Iran.

“We’re doing this terrible thing all over again,” wrote Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and previously a Iraq-war hawk.

Kenneth Pollack, whose 2002 book on Iraq was cited frequently by hawks before the Iraq invasion, argued not only against any further escalation, but also suggested that the US-EU sanctions were proving counterproductive.

Princeton University professor Anne-Marie Slaughter argued that the West and Iran were playing a “dangerous game of chicken” and that the West’s current course “leaves Iran’s government no alternative between publicly backing down, which it will not do, and escalating its provocations”.

“The more publicly the West threatens Iran, the more easily Iranian leaders can portray America as the Great Satan,” wrote Slaughter, formerly director of policy planning under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It remains to be seen if cooler heads will indeed prevail so that a new war against Iran is avoided.