Money Laundering for Iran
It’s late August. Even the financial news takes a vacation. So of course it was a quiet couple of weeks with little news on Libor, the JPMorgan Chase hedge unit, News of the World or even Chesapeake. Government investigations likely continue their steady grind behind the curtain. Meanwhile both Tampa and New Orleans braced themselves for Isaac.
But wait, there was one new story of note: Laundries. Our own family has two laundries. One isn’t that great but it does a decent job with the standard business shirt for a reasonable price. The other is where we take our nicer outfits to be dry cleaned. It appears that Iran might have copied that model as several banks stand accused of laundering Iranian money on its way to and from the U.S. That would be illegal, due to the current international sanctions against Iran.
Standard Chartered
The story was just breaking in our last post when UK’s Standard Chartered was accused by the New York State Department of Financial Services with allegedly laundering $250 BILLION for Iran through its New York branch. The next week, Standard Chartered was reported working on a $340 Million deal with New York State allowing it to continue to operate in New York. The deal was completed, but only after their CEO left his vacation early (bummer!) to head directly to the US to negotiate. Standard Chartered still has to face several US Federal agencies.
Standard Chartered was also sued by the estates of military personnel killed in Lebanon in 1983 on the basis that the bank had concealed its Iranian money at the time the plaintiffs won a suit against Iran in connection with the tragedy.
Deutsche Bank and RBS
Several days later, Deutsche Bank was named as an additional target of Iran money laundering investigators.
Not to be outdone by the Germans, the Royal Bank of Scotland was also cited as a target in the investigation.
While apparently innocent in terms of Iran, Facebook’s iPO debacle continued to spew out more stories. One of its prominent directors dumped a reported $$ Billion-With-a-B in stock as soon as his restrictions in selling had lapsed. And the COO reportedly let out to an investor that the $38/share IPO value had been determined in part based on what it would take to deter Wall Street traders from simply flipping the stock. You mean it had nothing to do with the company’s actual value?? Unbelievable.
EthicsBite™ 
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