British Standard Chartered Bank accused of facilitating payments that financed Islamist terrorist groups

Standard Chartered Bank, one of the largest in the United Kingdom, has been accused of facilitating payments that financed Islamist terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and Hamas, between 2008 and 2013. The bank is also alleged to have enabled financial operations for other companies linked to Iran which were sanctioned by international organizations.

The accusations don't just target the bank. The complainants also criticized the United States government, accusing it of committing a "colossal fraud" by not applying sanctions against the bank for allowing transactions by companies that were under sanction.

The complaint, filed in a New York court, specifies that these transactions were worth billions of dollars. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, the judicial document was prepared with information uncovered by the plaintiffs - Julian Knight, former director of Standard Chartered, and Robert Marcellus - who found information "hidden deep in the bank's electronic spreadsheets."

In their lawsuit, Knight and Marcellus revealed that within this "hidden information" were 3.3 million financial operations valued at about $100 billion, all linked to Iran or terrorist groups:

Standard Chartered defends itself

In a statement reported by The Guardian, SBC stated that this lawsuit is "another attempt to use fabricated claims against the bank, following previous unsuccessful attempts."

"The false allegations underpinning it have been thoroughly discredited by the U.S. authorities who undertook a comprehensive investigation into the claims and said they were ‘meritless’ and did not show any violations of US sanctions. We are confident the courts will reject these claims, as they have already done repeatedly," he added.