Barclays to pay $298m for violating trade law

Barclays has agreed to pay $298 million to settle accusations that the bank facilitated illegal transfers of dollars for countries that were sanctioned by the US, including Iran, Cuba, Libya, Sudan and Myanmar, according to documents filed in federal district court in Washington.

For more than a decade, Barclays would strip information from wire transfers funnelled through US that identified the money as coming from sanctioned countries and entities, according to the court complaint.

Barclays, according to the complaint, would follow instructions from banks in the sanctioned countries not to use the banks names in messages that travelled through US. It also routed the payments to conceal the connection to sanctioned countries, amended messages to remove information that identified sanctioned entities, and used a less transparent method of payment messages.

Barclays funnelled about $500 million in illegal payments from 1995 through 2006, federal and New York State prosecutors said. The bank's actions violated, among other things, the federal Trading With the Enemy Act and New York State laws against falsifying business records. NYT NEWS SERVICE
Source:- The Times of India, 18th August Page 24 Delhi