BENKI ya Kiingereza Standard Chartered imekubali kulipa dola za Kimarekani milioni 340 kwa mmoja wa mdhibiti wa mabenki wa Marekani mj...
BENKI ya
Kiingereza Standard Chartered imekubali kulipa dola za Kimarekani milioni 340
kwa mmoja wa mdhibiti wa mabenki wa Marekani mjini New York kumaliza mzozo
kwamba imetumika kutakasa fedha kwa ajili ya Iran na marafiki zake na
kumdanganya wadhibiti.
Makubaliano
hayo kati ya benki na mdhibiti Benjamin M. Lawsky wa New York Department of
Financial Services kunamaliza vita ya miezi 10
kati ya mdhibiti huyo na benki hiyo. Lawsky bila msaada aliishtaki benki
hiyo bila msaada wa mtu mwingine akilalamikia benki huyo kufanya transactions 60,000
thamani ya dola za Marekani bilioni 250.
Some
federal authorities worry the deal has the potential to undercut a sweeping
settlement between the bank and federal regulators, including the Federal
Reserve and the Treasury Department. They are also investigating Standard
Chartered, a 150-year-old bank based in London with operations across the
globe.
The
$340 million deal is a huge amount for a single state regulator, and it falls
near the middle of the collective settlements that the Justice Department and
the Manhattan district attorney have reached with other global banks in recent
years over money laundering charges, from $619 million with ING bank in June to
$298 million with Barclays in 2010.
Standard
Chartered has maintained that only $14 million of the $250 billion in
transactions violated federal regulations. In a statement announcing the
settlement, Mr. Lawsky said, “The parties have agreed that the conduct at issue
involved transactions of at least $250 billion.”
The
bank said in a regulatory filing Tuesday that “a formal agreement containing
the detailed terms of the settlement is expected to be concluded shortly.”
Standard Chartered “continues to engage constructively with the other relevant
U.S. authorities. The timing of any resolution will be communicated in due
course,” the filing said.
After
frantic negotiations with Mr. Lawsky’s office, which threatened to revoke the
bank’s state license at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday, Standard Chartered
made a calculation to settle, in part, to resolve the public relations
headache, according to people briefed on the matter.
The
agreement ends a weeklong international drama that thrust the upstart regulator
into the spotlight and pitted Mr. Lawsky against federal authorities who
thought he was overstepping his bounds and British authorities who accused him
of tarnishing the reputation of their banks.
The
size of the settlement is puzzling to some federal officials, including the
Justice Department, because there is still widespread disagreement about the
extent of the bank’s wrongdoing, according to regulators briefed on the matter.
In
the weeks leading up to Mr. Lawsky’s move against the bank, the Justice
Department was on the brink of deciding not to pursue criminal charges, after
concluding that virtually all of the transactions with Iran had complied with
United States law, current and former authorities said.
Until
2008, federal law allowed foreign banks to transfer money for Iranian clients
through their American subsidiaries to another foreign institution. Mr. Lawsky
claimed the 60,000 transactions occurred from January 2001 through 2007, as
United States authorities suspected Iranians of using their banks to finance
terrorism and nuclear weapons development.
Standard
Chartered maintains that “99.9 percent” of the transactions under scrutiny
involved legitimate Iranian banks and corporations and that none of the
payments had anything to do with supporting terrorist activities. Because the
bank did not properly report the transactions that had been routed through its
New York branch, Mr. Lawsky’s office has said it was impossible to know how the
money was used by the Iranians.
Mr.
Lawsky based his case, in large part, on claims that the bank had violated
state law by masking the identities of its Iranian clients, lying to regulators
and thwarting American efforts to detect money laundering.
Particularly
difficult for the bank, people with knowledge of the settlement talks said, was
a trove of e-mails and memos detailing an elaborate strategy devised by the
bank’s executives. An e-mail from a lawyer to bank executives in 2001 said that
payment instructions for Iranian clients “should not identify the client or the
purpose of the payment,” according Mr. Lawsky’s order.
One
Iranian client was told to use “NO NAME GIVEN” in paperwork to transfer money,
to escape scrutiny and “not appear to N.Y. to have come from an Iranian bank,”
according to a 2003 e-mail from a bank official cited in the order.
In 2006,
according to the order, the bank’s chief executive for the Americas wrote his
bosses in London that the transactions with Iran had “the potential to cause
very serious or even catastrophic reputational damage to the group.”
While
violating the spirit of the law, the stripping of data that identified Iranian
clients was not typically illegal until 2008 because foreign banks didn’t have
to provide much information to their American units as long as they had
thoroughly scoured the transactions for suspicious activity.
For
Standard Chartered, the settlement signals a strategic shift. Last week, it
said it “strongly rejects the position and portrayal of facts” by the agency.
The
settlement is far more than the $5 million that the bank had been willing to
pay to settle the case earlier this year, people with knowledge of the case
said.
Even
so, “it’s a small number to pay for the privilege of continuing to do billions
of dollars of business through its New York branch,” said Sarah Jane Hughes,
a banking law professor at the Indiana
University Maurer School of Law.
Gov.
Andrew M. Cuomo of New York lauded the Department of Financial Services, which
was formed last year through a merger of existing banking and insurance
departments. He said in a statement that the “result demonstrates the
effectiveness and leadership” of the agency “and I commend the state
Legislature for creating a modern regulator for today’s financial marketplace.”
The
$340 million will go entirely to Mr. Lawsky’s department and then into the
state government’s general fund.
Over
the weekend, Standard Chartered worked closely with Mr. Lawsky’s office to hash
out some kind of agreement, with the bank’s chief executive, Peter Sands,
flying to New York from London early this week.
Mr.
Lawsky has been unapologetic in his approach to the bank, even while weathering
some criticism for going on the offensive against the bank on his own rather
than moving in concert with other regulators.
The
bank said that in 2010 it voluntarily turned over to several United States
regulators a battery of e-mails and other internal bank documents detailing its
dealings with Iran. But Mr. Lawsky felt he couldn’t wait any longer for federal
regulators after an examination by his office revealed persistent failures in
its compliance with bank secrecy and money-laundering laws, according to people
with knowledge of the review.
As
part of the settlement, the bank will install a monitor for at least two years
to vet the bank’s money-laundering controls and put in permanent officials who
will audit the bank’s internal procedures.
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