A UK bank has been accused in a US court of helping to fund terror groups such as Hamas and al-Qaeda by carrying out financial transactions involving more than $100bn.
Standard Chartered, one of the UK’s largest banks, is accused of carrying out the deals from 2008 to 2013, despite the fact Washington had imposed sanctions against Iran.
The lender had been facing prosecution for money laundering by the US government but were saved from a court ordeal after the intervention by Lord Cameron’s government the documents claim.
The bank was initially fined $227m (£177m) by the US Justice Department for illegally moving millions of dollars through the US financial system between 2001 and 2007 on behalf of groups in Iran and other countries sanctioned by the US.
The settlements, known as deferred prosecution agreements, allowed the bank to avoid criminal charges in exchange for cleaning up its act. However, the bank has subsequently been fined again after prosecutors found additional wrongdoing.
In all, the London-based bank has reportedly paid well over $2bn (£1.6bn) to settle US and UK charges it repeatedly breached sanctions by clearing millions of dollars for clients in sanctioned countries. It has not admitted conducting transactions for “terrorist” organisations.
In the latest allegations, a whistleblower who worked for it, claims it carried out billions of dollars in banking transactions for Iran, international terror groups, and “the front companies for those groups,” long after it claimed to have discontinued business in the country in 2007.
The whistleblower, former bank executive Julian Knight, claims he provided US investigators with evidence of wrongdoing more widespread than the bank has yet admitted; he said authorities failed to act on it, then denied its existence to a US court.
According to Mr Knight, US investigators failed to identify at least 500,000 separate transactions. He claims the records were “cloaked” in computer files that he gave the government and which were not examined thoroughly.
He is seeking to challenge a court’s decision in 2019 to dismiss his whistleblower complaint and is seeking to force the US government to disclose all government officials’ statements and other evidence the court used to dismiss his case at the time. He is claiming that US government agencies made false statements to a court in order to have the claim for a whistleblower’s reward dismissed.
The US authorities involved in investigating the bank successfully applied to have their case dismissed in 2019. A FBI agent claimed to a court that it showed nothing that “indicated or suggested that the bank had engaged in improper US dollar transactions” after 2007.
US authorities argued the whistleblower’s allegations “did not lead to the discovery of any new … violations” and the court dismissed the case as “meritless”.
However, independent analysis by an expert with decades of experience examining illicit bank transactions for the CIA, David Scantling.
An independent expert has identified $9.6bn (£7.5bn) of foreign exchange transactions with individuals and companies designated by the US government as funding “terror groups”, including Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, according to the BBC.
The bank disputes the claims put forward by whistleblowers, saying their previous allegations had been “thoroughly discredited” in the US. The bank has previously portrayed former whistleblowers as “rogue”.
Standard Chartered said the latest US case was “another attempt to use fabricated claims against the bank, following previous unsuccessful attempts.”
“The false allegations underpinning it have been thoroughly discredited by the US authorities which undertook a comprehensive investigation into the claims and said they were ‘meritless’ and did not show any violations of US sanctions,” the spokesperson said. “We are confident the courts will reject these claims, as they have already done repeatedly.”
The US Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigations declined to comment on the case.
Standard Chartered shares fell after the US legal concerns were revealed. Earlier this year a High Court judge in London ruled the bank will face around £1.5bn claims from investors over allegations it deliberately breached Iranian sanctions to win new business. The first of those trials has been scheduled for October 2026.
