U.S. ignored evidence major U.K. bank was helping fund sanctioned Iranian groups, whistleblower says

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London-based Standard Chartered, which primarily serves clients in emerging markets, was previously punished with more than $1.7 billion in fines after admitting in 2012 and 2019 to violating sanctions on Iran and other blacklisted countries. The bank denies that it ran transactions for any organizations designated as terrorists. Court filings provided by former Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) employee turned whistleblower Julian Knight claim that U.S. officials lied by denying that Knight provided them with evidence of far greater wrongdoing by the bank. Standard Chartered Plc bank branch in Hong Kong Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Recent documents submitted to a U.S. federal court allege that major British bank Standard Chartered helped finance sanctioned Iranian entities and terrorist groups, and that relevant evidence was ignored by American authorities.

London-based Standard Chartered, which primarily serves clients in emerging markets, was previously punished with more than a combined $1.7 billion in fines after admitting in 2012 and 2019 to violating sanctions on Iran and other blacklisted countries.

The bank denies that it ran transactions for any organizations designated as terrorists.

The latest court filings, provided by former Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) employee turned whistleblower Julian Knight, claim that U.S. officials lied by denying that he provided them with evidence of far greater wrongdoing by the bank. The officials then applied to dismiss his whistleblower case against the bank as “meritless” in 2019 in order to shield it, Knight alleged. He has now asked a U.S. federal court in New York to reinstate the case.

Knight, who led a Standard Chartered transaction services unit between 2009 and 2011, was one of two whistleblowers who gave U.S. investigators confidential bank statements in 2012 and 2013. The statements documenting transactions that he says contained proof of further sanctions breaches, including violations beyond 2007, when the bank said it had stopped any dealings with Iran.

Knight’s court filing alleges that the U.S. government committed a “colossal fraud” against the legal system by denying he had presented “damning evidence” that Standard Chartered “facilitated many billions of dollars in banking transactions for Iran, numerous international terror groups, and the front companies for those groups,” according to a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Some of that evidence, the court filing says, showed that the bank’s clients included front companies for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary

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