Standard Chartered is facing an FBI investigation and potential fines of billions of dollars after a British whistleblower’s case was picked up by Donald Trump.
Britain’s fifth largest bank has been hit by more allegations that it helped companies linked to Iran’s military and nuclear interests circumvent US sanctions.
Standard Chartered has already been fined £1.5billion by the US authorities for breaching sanctions against Iran, through its US branch.
But former bank executive Julian Knight claims it covered up the true scale of the breaches.
Knight first revealed the allegations in the Daily Mail business pages six years ago and has fought a prolonged battle in the US courts with the bank and US government.
Last week, Trump posted on his Truth Social account a story accusing New York’s Democrat Attorney General Letitia James of ignoring Knight’s treasure trove of bank data last year.
Allegations: Standard Chartered, which sponsors Liverpool Football Club, is facing an FBI investigation Pictured: footballer Mohamed Salah of Liverpool FC
The US President has targeted James, calling her a ‘disgrace’, after she successfully pursued Trump and his organisation for financial fraud, with a New York court handing out a £333million fine.
Sean Buckley, the deputy US attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), has now revealed in an email to Knight’s US lawyers that a file has been reviewed and passed onto the FBI.
He wrote: ‘SDNY and the FBI are committed to investigating these new potential sanctions violations.
‘We and our partners at the FBI take such allegations very seriously.’
The bank has consistently claimed that Knight, and his fellow whistleblower, American financier Bob Marcellus, had ‘fabricated claims’ to seek ‘personal financial gain’.
This is because under the US False Claims Act, whistleblowers are entitled to 15-30 per cent of any fines recovered from companies found to have defrauded the US federal government.
They first handed over bank data to US regulators in 2012 but claim they have uncovered bank spreadsheets that showed vast amounts of ‘concealed transactions with Iranian entities’.
Last year, Knight and Marcellus and their legal team presented this evidence to US officials, including Chris D’Angelo, Letitia James’ right-hand man at the New York Attorney General’s office.
Last night, Knight said: ‘After 13 years, I feel vindicated and gratified that the Department of Justice has finally recognised the extreme importance of the information we provided in 2012.’
Last night, a Standard Chartered source said that ‘nothing has changed as far as we are concerned’.
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This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .