Standard Chartered Bank Investigation Part of a Larger Political Conspiracy?
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The money-laundering allegations brought against British bank Standard Chartered have led to suspicions of a political conspiracy. According to a report by Reuters, several political observers and bank executives are questioning if the recent scandals involving British banks are part of a larger scheme that seeks to undermine London’s role as a global financial centre.
The money-laundering allegations brought against British bank Standard Chartered have led to suspicions of a political conspiracy. According to a report by Reuters, several political observers and bank executives are questioning if the recent scandals involving British banks are part of a larger scheme that seeks to undermine London’s role as a global financial centre.
Standard Chartered saw $17 billion wiped off its market value on Tuesday after the New York State Department of Financial Services alleged that the UK bank had “schemed” with the government of Iran to launder $250 billion from 2001 to 2007, leaving the U.S. financial system “vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes”.
Related News: Standard Chartered Accused of Hiding $250 Billion in Iranian Transactions
Standard Chartered has “strongly rejected” the claims and said in a statement that “well over 99.9 percent” of transactions with Iran were regulatory-compliant with the exceptions amounting to $14 million.
The scandal comes shortly after Barclays, also a British Bank, agreed in June to pay a record fine of $453 million to US and British authorities to settle allegations that it rigged key interbank lending rates known as Libor.
A month later, a US Senate panel issued a scathing report that criticised HSBC, another British bank, of lax controls and failures that allowed the movement of billions of dollars for accounts linked to drug cartels, terrorist funding and tax cheats.
Related Story: Post-Libor – Why Bankers Now Face A Legitimacy Crisis: Simon Johnson
Related News: HSBC Accused of Money Laundering for Drug Cartels and Terrorist Groups
Related News: HSBC Fined $27.5m in Money Laundering Probe
According to Reuters, “some in the United Kingdom see a conspiracy in the US attack on Standard Chartered.”
John Mann, a British politician, told Reuters he saw an “anti-British bias” behind “disproportionate publicity that’s given to British banking problems, as opposed to American banking problems.”
He added:
[quote] I think it’s a concerted effort that’s being organised at the top of the US government. I think this is Washington trying to win a commercial battle to have trading from London shifted to New York … This is political onslaught. [/quote]
An unnamed British bank executive agreed with Mann, adding that he sees the recent banking scandals as a “subtle form of banking sector protectionism”.
However, Ross Delton, a former US regulator who now advises companies on anti-money laundering issues, thinks British banks have badly misread how the politics around anti-money laundering have changed in the US. He told the Telegraph:
[quote] The biggest difference between US banks and foreign banks is that the US banks have a greater understanding of how important these issues are to regulators … The US takes this stuff very, very seriously. [/quote]Related Story: UK’s Alarming Apathy towards Its Banking Sector’s Criminality
Scepticism in Britain of US motives was not universal, however.
“London is looking like a pretty disreputable place at the moment,” another executive said.
[quote] Rather than fall into the British them-versus-us-mindset, let’s really bang our chests and figure out just how dirty London really is as a place to do business. [/quote]
