LONDON Monday, June 10 , 2024 – A whistleblower has accused a major British bank of facilitating billions of dollars in transactions for terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda, according to a BBC report filed on June 4. 1
According to the BBC, the whistleblower, a former executive at Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), submitted documents to a New York court alleging the bank processed these transactions between 2008 and 2013.
The documents reportedly detail over $100 billion worth of transactions that violated U.S. sanctions against Iran and other countries.
The bank has previously admitted to breaching sanctions regulations twice, in 2012 and 2019, resulting in fines exceeding $1.7 billion. However, the bank has not acknowledged involvement with terrorist organizations.
According to BBC News, Knight claims the U.S. government either ignored or concealed evidence of SCB’s alleged misconduct.
The bank has not yet commented on the new allegations.
This development follows reports in June 2024 alleging SCB evaded prosecution for funding “terrorist groups” in 2012 after intervention by the British government.
Meanwhile, the two whistleblowers, who include a former executive at the British bank, filed a motion last week to set aside a judgment that dismissed an earlier lawsuit they filed, in an attempt to revive their efforts, the Guardian reported. 2
The news report by The Guardian said:
“The two men, who run Brutus Trading, which was formed to pursue their claim, said in court papers that their lawsuit should be reinstated after they used forensic data analysis to “decloak” information “hidden deep in the bank’s electronic spreadsheets”.
The data was provided by Brutus to US authorities in 2012 and 2013 and the whistleblowers claim it shows “countless illegal transactions” by the bank. Standard Chartered denies the allegations.
The whistleblowers, Julian Knight, a former global head of foreign exchange transaction banking who left Standard Chartered in 2011, and Robert Marcellus, a currency trader, were helped by forensic investigator David Scantling, who began examining the data and worked together to reveal “transactions that were hidden”, the court documents claim.
By February 2024, the men alleged they had “identified over 3.3 million previously undisclosed transactional records, of which 500,000 documented unique transactions spanning from 2008 to 2013”.
The court documents said that the data showed 20,000 foreign exchange transactions related to Iran that took place between 2008 and 2013 and had a cumulative notional value of $100bn (£78bn).”
Read Guardian’s Full Report Here:
- bbc.com: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11j09q2llo[↩]
- theguardian.com: https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/04/uk-bank-standard-chartered-iran-terrorists-sanctions[↩]
