Reported by Scilla Alecci

A former Standard Chartered Bank executive said in a new court filing that U.S. authorities either overlooked or concealed crucial evidence showing the bank conducted many more transactions with sanctioned Iranian entities and terror groups than it admitted to when settling a criminal case in 2012.

Julian Knight, who headed a Standard Chartered transaction services unit from 2009 to 2011,  said U.S. officials falsely denied he had provided the information when the Justice Department declined to intervene in his whistleblower claim against the bank.

Knight, who asked a U.S. federal court in New York to reinstate his claim, said that the government had committed a “colossal fraud” on the court by denying he had provided “damning evidence” that the bank “facilitated many billions of dollars in banking transactions for Iran, numerous international terror groups, and the front companies for those groups,” long after it claimed to have discontinued all Iranian operations in 2007.

He said the government either “lied that it had conducted ‘a lengthy, costly, and substantial investigation’ into his claims or it was “fully aware” of the  transactions he had provided “and simply lied to conceal them.” He added: “The Government’s own statements support the latter scenario.”

“False declarations submitted to the Court by the Government thus corrupted the integrity of this judicial proceeding to its very core,” Knight’s motion said.

Read full report: https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/whistleblower-accuses-us-of-ignoring-evidence-standard-chartered-bank-served-suspicious-iranian-clients/