US Plays Financial Globocop

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 8/30/2007 03:04:00 PM
Yesterday, I featured an article concerning how the rest of the world is keen on making sure that it isn't the unwitting buyer of US subprime and assorted junk. Today, we have a brace of articles from the Financial Times on how the US is seeking to fine various European financial institutions millions of dollars for doing business with the likes of Iran, Libya, Cuba, and Sudan. Unlike what I viewed as a rather dubious case for the rest of the world meddling in US financial regulation, there may be a more legitimate basis in ensuring compliance from FIs not to engage in business with these regimes as some are subject to UN sanctions as well. Below is the lead-off article:

The US justice department and other authorities have stepped up investigations into several large European banks for violating US sanctions against Iran, Libya, Cuba and Sudan.

One person familiar with the probes said some banks had started to discuss settlements with the authorities and could agree to financial penalties by the end of the year.

A number of the banks, whose names have not been disclosed, came under investigation by authorities, including the Treasury, when they alerted the government to potential violations after a landmark money laundering settlement by ABN Amro in 2005, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Dutch bank was fined $80m by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, state regulators and the Federal Reserve after it emerged that its US offices had processed wire transfers that originated from Bank Melli Iran and engaged in transfers involving Libya.

The payments breached anti-money laundering compliance rules and requirements that banks report suspicious activity.

Some payments were transferred through the US after ABN obscured identifying references. After its $80m civil fine, ABN Amro said in April it was putting aside €365m to resolve a separate criminal investigation by the justice department into its dollar-clearing activities.

The Clearing House and the Wolfsberg Group, two international banking associations whose members include HSBC, UBS and Credit Suisse, have endorsed changes that would provide banks and their counterparts with more information about those conducting wire transfers.

US officials, including under-secretary Stuart Levey at the Treasury, applauded the banks’ initiative but it is thought unlikely to deter authorities from addressing previous violations.

And here is more of a backgrounder to the story. A issue being raised here is why the US is acting now when it was common knowledge that such activities were commonplace before:

When regulators in 2005 slapped ABN Amro with an $80m (€59m, £40m) penalty for violations of US sanctions against Libya and Iran, it sent seismic waves through the international banking system.

The reverberations are still being felt today.

People close to several European banks say that US regulators and criminal investigators have broadened the scope of a probe that began with the Dutch bank.

They are now examining whether a handful of banks similarly violated laws by processing US dollar payments through US counterparts for clients in Iran, Cuba, Libya and Sudan, countries that – with the exception of Libya after 2004 – are still subject to US sanctions programmes.

Some legal experts say the case against ABN Amro, which promised in April to set aside hundreds of millions of euros to resolve a criminal investigation by the US justice department into its US dollar clearing practices, clarified for the first time the Bush administration’s position and interpretation of sanctions rules and their application to the financial services industry.

Namely, that US banks and individuals are not allowed to facilitate banking activity abroad in which they could not engage directly.

“The ABN Amro case is a very high-profile indication of the intention of the Office of Foreign Assets Control [at the US Treasury] and other agencies to enforce that position.

“As a result, it is a wake-up call for the financial community with respect to the handling of wire transfers by foreign banks that ultimately touch on US-embargoed states,” says Wynn Segall, a partner at law firm Akin Gump in Washington.

Another Washington attorney said it remained to be seen whether the investigations that were under way would result in penalties as large as the one facing ABN Amro, or whether they were part of a broader strategy by regulators to put pressure on European banks to cut ties with Iran.

The US Treasury has warned more than 40 banks across the world that it would follow a strict interpretation of US and United Nations restrictions on doing business with Tehran as part of its campaign to persuade financial institutions to break ties with Iran.

Some people familiar with the investigations, who asked not to be named, say that the looming possibility of financial penalties raises questions about the authority of US regulators to penalise banks for conduct that went unchecked for years.

“This is an issue where the legal lines are not clear. It is the kind of thing that banks around the world engaged in.

“The bottom line is, name a major bank in Europe that didn’t do dollar payments for Iran or Sudan. A large number of them did it for Cuba – and right there is the issue,” said one person familiar with the matter.

But if the ABN Amro case represents a model for the kinds of cases that US authorities may be bringing against other banks in the future, as some legal experts believe, then the US government would have a strong case to argue that the violations under scrutiny were not just routine technical blunders.

In the case of the Dutch bank, regulators found that one of ABN Amro’s foreign branches was able to develop and implement “special procedures” for certain fund transfers and other operations “designed and used” to circumvent compliance systems established to comply with US laws.

James Freis, director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), a division of the Treasury that investigates money laundering, said last month that “myths” about big penalties for minor lapses in banking requirements should be dispelled and that federal financial regulators were making “great efforts” to eliminate uncertainty about what they expect in a “solid, risk-based”, anti-money laundering programme.

Banks seeking to come to grips with the potential regulatory issues they face for previous activity are, in the meantime, moving ahead with voluntary changes to international wire transfer practices.

Two international banking associations in April said they anticipated that an “enhanced system” of message formats would be developed that would “protect the integrity” and “enhance the transparency” of international wire transfers.