Standard Chartered has acknowledged that it secretly moved at least a quarter trillion dollars of Iranian money through the US banking system over several years.
Families that have won suits against Iran and been awarded damages now argue that, in doing so, Standard Chartered denied them access to funds that they could have legitimately seized for their court awarded damages.
A lawsuit was filed in Manhattan recently by survivors of some of the 241 Marines killed in the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut. Those families won a judgment of $2.6 billion in 2007 but have never received any money because they were unable to find any Iranian assets in the United States to seize.
Now they are arguing that Standard Chartered moved such assets through the United States but hid the fact that the money was Iran’s.
It isn’t clear what chance the suit will have in the US courts. A major problem may be the fact that any money they would now be able to seize would belong to Standard Chartered or its customers, not to the Islamic Republic. Supposedly the point of the multitude of “victims of terrorism” suits is to make Iran pay for its policy of terrorism. The suits have resulted in awards of around $20 billion over the last 15 years.
The suit against the bank argues that Standard Chartered’s hiding of the Iranian funds it was moving through the US banking system was part of “concerted efforts to evade US sanctions against IranÖ. Those unlawful actions are part and parcel of Iran’s longstanding, determined efforts to evade collection of the judgment and other judgments obtained by victims of Iran’s ongoing terror campaign.”
Standard Chartered agreed to pay a fine of $340 million to New York State for moving the Iranian money. The bank still faces possible fines from four federal agencies that are investigating its conduct. Eight banks have been fined more than $3 billion over the last few years for secretly moving Iranian funds through the United States.