British bank accused of helping to fund terrorists

A British bank that escaped prosecution for money laundering carried out billions of dollars of transactions for funders of terrorist groups, US court papers allege.

Standard Chartered, one of the UK’s largest banks, avoided prosecution by the US Department of Justice after Lord Cameron’s government intervened on its behalf in 2012.

New documents filed to a New York court claim thousands of transactions worth more than $100bn were carried out by the bank from 2008 to 2013 in breach of sanctions against Iran.

An independent expert has identified $9.6bn 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.

In a statement, the bank said it disputes the whistleblowers’ claims, saying their previous allegations had been “thoroughly discredited" by US authorities.