This is just the beginning for Stanchart.....by agreeing to pay a fine so quickly after last week's defiance suggests there is substance to the charges. If so, the wost is yet to come - every Federal outfit up to and including the DOJ will be after them, an then there will be the class action suits. Death of a thousand cuts.

The worst is yet to come? Lets hope that they start suing all these AMERICAN banks who knew they were dealing in all these so called laundered USD$. But I don't think that is about to happen, Chase Manhattan was taking hundreds of millions of USD when I was laundering money for the Iranian Banks for nearly 5 years. You won't see Americans suing their own!!!!!

Opinion, base on personal observation.

This shows the utter stupidity of treating corporations as if they were persons.
The corporation is punished for the offence, not the actual planners and perpertrators.
Think about this if you will, the corporation kills someone unlawfully.
How do you punish the corporation ?
Any fine imposed upon a corporation is ultimately regarded as the 'cost of doing business", by the sociopathic decision makers.
Corporation law should be changed to make the decision makers directly responsible for the actions that they endorse and promote.
The present situation allows the sociapaths to make decisions that benefit them and no one else, not the shareholders, the public or the other employees.
Over the past two decades, as an investor, I would say that there is ample evidence that most companies are managed mainly for the benefit of the sociopaths of the upper echolon management.

I totally agree 100%. Let me tell you the fine is just another tiny little surcharge, the price of doing business. The profits way out way the tiny surcharge of a fine when you are helping out the axis of evil.

This is just the beginning for Stanchart.....by agreeing to pay a fine so quickly after last week's defiance suggests there is substance to the charges. If so, the wost is yet to come - every Federal outfit up to and including the DOJ will be after them, an then there will be the class action suits. Death of a thousand cuts

Wrong it is sheer pragmatism. They have been blackmailed by the regulator and had to pay up. However anyone with a brain can see you cannot give a rogue institution a banking licence. The democrat poodle is on a road to nowhere. His own will ditch him as soon as the UK and EU politicians hint the next Chinese query over the reserve currency will be received better by EU citizens. Who have seen billions conned by the yanks.

From a US regulatory view don't expect any other agency to take action on this issue. From a US viewpoint it is not thefine that is most important, it is the actions that Standard Chartered has agreed to take to make sure that money laundering does not occur in the US. However their is an elephant in the room. US operations comprise only a part of the bank's operations. The underlying problem has been with the bank's culture. As this pervades all of the bank's operations what else could be going on? I think that is time for the Bank of England to get it's act togethere and begin it's own investigation.

I think its time Chase Manhattan gets it act together, along with a few other US Banks, they forwarded the proceeds of all this laundered money. CIA said they knew all the bank accounts of Iran anyway. It is stupid to assume this one can be pinned on the Bank of England who couldn't organize an orgy in a brothel. It was the international banking regulations that can be blamed. All MT202 banking transactions to help forward these proceeds to other banks without naming 1)the original source and 2) the names of all Iranian companies involved are to blame. It took years before the international banking institutions finally clamped down on these dodgy MT202's. So blame the US for processing them, not Europe of London. I can name many European Banks including Swiss and London that were using this method of so called laundering and the USA was very very very willing to process them. Or are you really telling me that Americans are so stupid that they just found out!!!

While I do not like the term sociopath, I do agree that individual responsibility for the actions taken has not been punished. Everyone responsible will still be getting bonuses. No individual fines will be levied. No cease and desist orders will be issued against bank management. People will complain about the bad US regulators, but no shareholders will step up to the plate and accept their responsibility. If executive management and the board do something wrong, they are working for you, so you should fire them or at least reduce bonuses.

I agree that we have a corrupt, unethical system. I don't see how the CIA can know all of Iran's bank account - they can know what they know - but does not mean that they know everything. I don't think it would be fair to pin everything on the Bank of England, but they are the lead regulator and should be coordinating international regulatory activity. In most cases they would be receiving the reports from other regulatory agencies. In this case, one NY agency acted without even talking to other US agencies.

Are the US regulators stupid? Not really. We have a Congress that already says that we are overregulated and will not provide the regulators with the resources to enforce the regulations we do have. We probably have more banks in the USA than the rest of the world combined. Since 1990 the number of banks have been reduced from 12,000 to only about 7,000. Any of our top ten banks have more assets than many countries. And to make the regulatory job even harder we have 12 Federal reserve agencies, agencies responsible for each State, multiple Federal agencies that oversee money laundering, Federal agencies that only responsible for overviewing international activity and Agencies that are only responsible for overviewing domestic activity. And no agency responsible for overseeing our regulatory herd of cats.

In contrast the UK will soon have only a few agencies responsible for overseeing banking, and in comparison to the number of US banks, have only a tiny number of banks to oversee.

The other thing that also needs to be mentioned is that the reasons the US have done nothing until now, is that it is not making any more money from the fore-mentioned laundered transactions. Best way to claw back lost commissions is to sue. You double your money that way. Money doesn't smell, it travels millions of miles at the flick of a button, but it always leaves an electronic trace. Who is going to prove a bank did or didn't know who was the originator and the recipient of an MT202 to anonymous accounts when profits are to be made ?
Forensic accountants will take forever to find out and even if they do find out, how will they prove the banks knew who owned these anonymous accounts? We can assume that as the US passed on all this laundered money back to us remained complicit in the transaction, they too never questioned the anonymous accounts. The fact that they have done nothing till now is laughable...........and how are we to stop Iranian oil reaching Russian and Chinese soil?

Firstly the FSA is responsible or irresponsible for the policing of the banks, the Bank of England can't even
organize a LIBOR rate. There were 512 banks in London at last count, and they can't even regulate or police that. But at least Londoners can organize a good party like the Olympics.