Standard Chartered and Iran: Banking for the Bad Guys

IN A bombshell statement New York’s Department of Financial Services added Standard Chartered, a British bank, to the rank of financial institutions under siege, calling it a “rogue institution”. It accuses Standard Chartered of executing 60,000 secret transactions worth $250 billion for Iranian customers in exchange for “hundreds of millions of dollars” in fees. In a footnote the regulator also says that there is evidence of similar “schemes” with other countries subject to American sanctions, including Libya, Myanmar and Sudan.