A British bank is allegedly involved in financing terrorism

US court documents claim that a British bank that dodged punishment for money laundering performed billion-dollar transactions for terrorist organisation backers.

One of the biggest banks in the UK, Standard Chartered, escaped prosecution from the US Department of Justice in 2012 thanks to intervention on the bank's behalf by Lord Cameron's administration.

According to newly filed lawsuit filings in New York, the bank transacted hundreds of transactions totaling over $100 billion in violation of Iranian sanctions between 2008 and 2013.

$9.6 billion in foreign exchange transactions with people and businesses that the US government has recognised as aiding "terror groups," such as Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban, have been uncovered by an independent expert.

The Central Bank of Iran and other sanctioned organisations were accused by the public of using Standard Chartered's fraudulent transaction data on Swift, an international payment system used by hundreds of financial institutions, to transfer billions of dollars through its New York branch.

However, George Osborne, the chancellor in Lord Cameron's administration at the time, surreptitiously stepped in to support the bank in September 2012.

The US Department of Justice made the decision not to pursue the bank three months later.

The bank has twice acknowledged breaking sanctions against Iran and other nations, paying more than $1.7 billion in fines for each infraction (first in 2012 and again in 2019). However, it hasn't acknowledged carrying out business with "terrorist" groups.

The transactions were concealed in private bank spreadsheets that were initially provided to US authorities in 2012 by two informants, one of whom was Julian Knight, a former executive at Standard Chartered.

They contend that US government organisations misled a judge in order to have their request for a whistleblower award denied.

In 2019, the US authorities that were looking into the bank were successful in their request to have their case dropped. Nothing "indicated or suggested that the bank had engaged in improper US dollar transactions" after 2007, an FBI agent testified in court.

The US Department of Justice and the FBI both declined to comment. On the record, Lord Cameron and Mr. Osborne remained silent.

"Convinced the courts will reject these claims," stated Standard Chartered. According to the statement, US officials had already determined that the accusations made by the whistleblowers were "meritless" and "did not show any violations of US sanctions."

However, the whistleblowers contend that the US government has committed "a colossal fraud on this court by falsely denying" that the information they gave was "previously unknown, damning."

(Sources: bbc.co.uk)