By Sam Tobin
LONDON (Reuters) – Standard Chartered sought on Tuesday to persuade a London court to remove from an investor lawsuit allegations that it broke U.S. sanctions against Iran in a “more widespread and systematic” way than the bank admitted to in a settlement with regulators.
More than 200 investors are suing Standard Chartered in the High Court for alleged untrue or misleading statements about its sanctions non-compliance between 2007 and 2019. The bank denies the claims.
They are relying in part on earlier claims made in a U.S. lawsuit brought by a company called Brutus Trading, which was dismissed earlier this year on appeal.
Standard Chartered agreed to pay $1.1 billion in 2019 to U.S. and British authorities over financial transactions that violated sanctions against Iran and other countries.
The 2019 deal extended by two years a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement with Standard Chartered, under which the London-based bank paid U.S. authorities $667 million.
The investors allege, however, “industrial-scale sanctions non-compliance” by Standard Chartered, along with financial control failures and bribery.
Court filings show Standard Chartered argues these allegations, which it says were investigated by U.S. authorities and found to be baseless, should be cut from the case.
Its lawyer Adrian Beltrami said that Standard Chartered admits the conduct described in the 2019 settlements, but strongly denies the allegations made by Brutus that its sanctions violations went beyond what it has admitted.
Standard Chartered is also trying to get thrown out allegations of bribery at a Singaporean company it part-owned.
The bank says it reported these claims in 2016 to the U.S. Department of Justice, which closed its investigation without bringing charges against it.
Judge Michael Green will decide whether to remove the allegations from the lawsuit after a three-day hearing, the first in the case.
Graham Chapman, the lawyer for the investors, said in court filings that even if the claims are removed, the investors’ case on the bank’s sanctions non-compliance which was at the centre of the U.S. and British settlements can still proceed to trial.
Chapman added that the total value of the lawsuit is unknown, but provisional figures show 10% of the cases are worth 286 million pounds ($345 million).
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Alexander Smith)
