Offices of the British bank Standard Chartered in London.Credit Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images Related Links In a deal that strikes at the heart of corporate recidivism, the British bank Standard Chartered has agreed to pay a $300 million fine and suspend an important business activity to settle an investigation over its failure to weed out transactions prone to money laundering.
The deal, announced on Tuesday by New York State's financial regulator, comes two years after the bank paid a combined $667 million to state and federal authorities over similar accusations. The earlier settlements resolved accusations that Standard Chartered, in part through its New York branch, processed transactions for Iran and other countries blacklisted by the United States.
The New York regulator, Benjamin M. Lawsky, has now taken aim at Standard Chartered for running afoul of that 2012 settlement, which he said required the bank to "remediate anti-money laundering compliance problems."
An independent monitor, hired as part of Mr. Lawsky's 2012 settlement, recently detected that the bank's computer systems did not flag a number of wire transfers flowing from areas of the world and from clients considered vulnerable to money laundering, according to Mr. Lawsky's order. The order did not specify the number of transactions that should have been flagged, but a person briefed on the matter said that it was "in the millions."
"If a bank fails to live up to its commitments, there should be consequences," Mr. Lawsky said in a statement. "That is particularly true in an area as serious as anti-money-laundering compliance, which is vital to helping prevent terrorism and vile human rights abuses."
Mr. Lawsky said that Standard Chartered, which is based in London but earns most of its profit in Asia, failed to catch many "high-risk transactions" stemming from its Hong Kong subsidiary and its branches in the United Arab Emirates. The breadth of the errors — and the repeat nature of the case — prompted Mr. Lawsky to take direct aim at both of those business units.
Under the deal, Standard Chartered's New York branch must indefinitely suspend its ability to process payments in dollar denominations, a crucial function known as dollar clearing, for high-risk retail business clients in Hong Kong. The bank also agreed to shed some of its "high-risk small and medium business clients" in its United Arab Emirates divisions, a penalty that represents a bigger threat to the bank's reputation than its bottom line.
Mr. Lawsky's threat of a dollar clearing suspension initially alarmed the bank, the person briefed on the matter said. But the limited nature of the suspension prompted the bank to assure some investors on Tuesday that the suspension was not expected to take a material toll on its financial performance, another person briefed on the matter said.
In its own statement, Standard Chartered said it "accepts responsibility for and regrets the deficiencies in the anti-money laundering transaction surveillance system at its New York branch." The statement added that the bank, which "has already begun extensive remediation efforts and is committed to completing these with utmost urgency," is also "committed to enhancing its effectiveness in the fight against financial crime."
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