British Bank Pays $340 Million to Settle Iran Claim

Posted August 14th, 2012 at 3:10 pm (UTC-5)
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The British bank Standard Chartered agreed Tuesday to pay $340 million to a U.S. financial regulator to settle allegations that it illegally hid $250 billion in transactions with Iranian interests over the last decade.

ZStandard Chertered denied the allegations last week when New York state officials accused Britain's fifth largest bank of being a “rogue institution,” hiding 60,000 financial transactions. But the bank quickly settled the charges before a scheduled hearing on Wednesday.

Four other U.S. regulators have also opened investigations of Standard Chartered's Iranian transactions, and they are not part of the settlement.

American laws strictly control trade with Iran. The U.S. and other Western nations are attempting to force Tehran to end what they say is a nuclear weapons development program, which Iran says does not exist.