www.reuters.com/business/finance/shares-santander-lloyds-fall-after-report-iran-used-banks-accounts-evade-2024-02-05/
Iran is claiming that it used accounts at Lloyds and Santander to evade sanctions.
Considering that we all take money laundering and sanctions very seriously I doubt it was a deliberate act by either of the banks.
I can't see the banks' systems not picking up these transactions unless they were very cleverly hidden.
The Govts. in the West have pretty much made banks their whipping boys with regards financial crime and they make the banks do all the work. It seems a simple task, but there a hundreds of millions of transactions a day which need to be examined, most of it is automated using algorithms to search known individuals, countries, products etc. There is also "AI" for want of a better phrase that scans transactions.
I suspect that Iran are fibbing. A smart act of economic warfare that costs them nothing but seriously hits the share prices of both companies and impacts many of us through our pension funds.
I note Barclays has not been mentioned, may be because of the large Middle East share ownership or HSBC which has a large Asian share ownership.
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Didn't HSBC incur multiple pretty hefty fines for money laundering in the not-so-dim-and-distant? I suspect they are all at it in some way, or at least have been, as there is quite serious (and maybe easy) revenue to be missed out on. That's not to say that they are knowingly complicit, but their systems have been likely simply not good enough to prevent it, or to alert management to it. Or maybe bankers bonuses meant they had one eye shut.
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One of them was done for failing to detect, or rather failing to act on, massive cash deposits but it was in UK and IIRC the suspicion was that cash related to drugs rather than international sanctions evasion.
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The failing to detect one was a huge cock up by the bank.
They took a jeweler on. The turnover was say£1m, but £100m went through the account in a short time. There was so much cash they were taking it in to the bank in suitcases.
Re staff turning a blind eye, we all do very similar training re financial crime. There is absolutely no doubt that it not allowed and no rational bank will authorise it. One main reason is that the fine can equal world wide turnover - not profits - i.e. it would wipe the bank out. Of course the banks train their staff so that they can say to the courts and FCA - "look we take financial crime seriously".
I know a huge amount is spent on financial crime systems. Short of checking every single transaction to the nth degree, some dodgy transactions will always get through.
An equivalent might be to monitor every single car journey and report on speeding and if the police force didn't stop every single one, then they would be prosecuted as well.
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>> The failing to detect one was a huge cock up by the bank.
>>
>> They took a jeweler on. The turnover was say£1m, but £100m went through the account
>> in a short time. There was so much cash they were taking it in to
>> the bank in suitcases.
I remember the case. Unless gross negligence was involved you have to assume people were paid to turn a blind eye.
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>>blind eye
I can't imagine the branch staff being complicit, unless it was a cultural thing. It was the cash processing center that noticed the suitcases of money. (I feel guilty paying in birthday money :-D )
I know staff have been sacked at my employer and referred to the authorities for smuggling out customer data to be sold on.
We also regularly find memory sticks left in our offices with malware on them. Luckily all our USB ports only accept mice and keyboards.
We have had computer engineers turn up at branches to install new hardware - which was in reality a bunch of criminals looking to install key loggers. Luckily the branch manager was awake and the police were called and got there in time to arrest them.
Of the two companies said to be involved in the sanction busting, one is tiny - a net worth of under £1k and the other has a net worth of £37k.
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>> banks train their staff so that they can say to the courts and FCA - "look we take financial crime seriously".
Like when you hear "your call is important to us".
And "we take customer care very seriously".
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Iran, Santander and Lloyds - smokie
