The UK-listed lender, which earns the bulk of its revenues outside the UK, in regions such as Asia, the Indian sub-continent and Africa, dismissed the claims.

UK-listed Standard Chartered says it is confident that a US court will reject allegations that it handled billions of dollars for funders of terrorist groups. 

The allegations, made in documents reportedly (various media reports – Bloomberg, BBC, others) state that thousands of transactions worth more than $100 billion were conducted by Standard Chartered from 2008 to 2013 in breach of sanctions against Iran.

In one report (BBC, 4 June), it stated that an independent expert has identified $9.6 billion 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.

Standard Chartered, which earns the bulk of its revenues outside the UK, in regions such as Asia, the Indian sub-continent and Africa, dismissed the claims as without merit.

“This filing is another attempt to use fabricated claims against the bank, following previous unsuccessful attempts,” the bank said in an emailed statement to this news service yesterday. “The false allegations underpinning it have been thoroughly discredited by the US authorities who undertook a comprehensive investigation into the claims and said they were ‘meritless’ and did not show any violations of US sanctions. We are confident the courts will reject these claims, as they have already done repeatedly.”

The BBC report said Standard Chartered avoided prosecution by the US Department of Justice after the government at that time, led by Lord [David] Cameron, intervened on its behalf in 2012.

This publication understands that there are historical cases linked to this dating back over several years which have been repeatedly rejected. One example is that of the long-running Brutus Trading qui tam case, for which there were numerous rulings in Standard Chartered’s favour, culminating in February 2024, when the US Supreme Court denied the plaintiff’s request to hear the case which marked the end to the appeals process. 

It appears that the latest filing is an attempt to reopen the case, alleging that the US government perpetrated a “colossal fraud” on the court regarding the thoroughness of its investigation into alleged sanctions violations in 2013 and 2014. It alleges the “de-cloaking” of new data in a spreadsheet that’s been in their possession for a decade and previously investigated by US authorities.