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- LONDON, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Following are comments made by Standard Chartered PLC Chief Executive Peter Sands to journalists on Wednesday: ON SURPRISE TIMING OF U.S. IRAN ALLEGATIONS "The order we received from the New York State Department for...
LONDON | Wed Aug 8, 2012 10:32pm IST
LONDON Aug 8 (Reuters) - Following are comments made by Standard Chartered PLC Chief Executive Peter Sands to journalists on Wednesday:
ON SURPRISE TIMING OF U.S. IRAN ALLEGATIONS
"The order we received from the New York State Department for Financial Services (DFS) came as a complete surprise to us.
"Of course we have been doing a review and discussing it with various U.S. agencies and regulators for some time since early 2010, and this was focused on compliance with U.S. sanctions and focused on Iran, but the surprise was in the manner of the announcement on its own and without giving us prior notice."
ON SCOPE OF INVALID IRAN TRANSACTIONS
"The most obvious question is the difference between figures of $250 billion (from the DFS) or the figure we put out of $14 million."
"To focus on $14 million - we did an analysis of 150 million payment transaction over the period of 2001-2007, conducted by (an) independent, external, specialist consultant, and of those transactions a little under 300 of them amounting to $14 million in dollars in value turned out to be not valid U-Turn transactions."
"That is clearly wrong and we are sorry that those mistakes occurred, they were mistakes, there were no systematic attempts to circumvent sanctions."
"(For example) One of the non compliance transactions was to a recipient based in Asia, with Asian nationality who we later discovered had dual nationality, the other one being U.S. and because of that, it was a non-compliant transaction."
"The $250 billion figure which we don't completely recognize is sort of in the order of the total number of U-Turn payment transactions processed by Standard Chartered New York in the period 2001-2007."
ON THREAT TO BANK'S U.S. LICENCE
"(We) fundamentally reject the overall picture and believe there are no grounds for them to take this action and it would be wholly disproportionate."
ON DAMAGE TO THE BANK
"It clearly has been very damaging, it would be unrealistic to pretend otherwise and our focus must be on resolving this and ensuring that we communicate effectively through all our stakeholders that we remain focused on client and customers, our strategies, the same value and cultures that we have had and believe in, so we are going to have to work hard to restore some of the damage."
ON "YOU F---ING AMERICANS" QUOTE IN DFS REPORT
"There are lots of matters in that order that frankly either we don't recognize or we don't understand or are factually inaccurate."
"I think the executive director was Richard (Meddings) at the time, in terms of (that) particular quote, on the basis of what we have looked at thus far, it wasn't an email or a document, it was a recollection of a meeting several years before, no-one at that meeting claims to have made that statement so we don't know whether the quote is accurate."
Asked what the bank's recollection was of what was said at the time, with regard to the quote cited by the DFS: "We don't believe it's accurate."
ON OTHER DISCREPANCIES WITH DFS
"(...) they quote the references in the document to us doing business for several hundreds of millions in fees but we disclosed that our total gross revenues from total Iranian (transactions) clearly from the period 2001-2007 was in the tens of millions, and that was in information provided to authorities, so there are a range of facts and points of details (which we are) trying to establish where they got it from."
ON GOOD CULTURE AT STANCHART
"This is a serious set of issues and I would repeat that we reject the position and portrayal of facts by the New York DFS and I would like to end by saying I don't think there is anything wrong with the culture at Standard Chartered."
"I think facts show we take our responsibility very seriously, that we always are seeking to comply with all relevant laws and regulations, yes we sometimes make mistakes, yes there are administrative issues or issues of misunderstanding ..., but the values and culture of the bank is trying to do the right thing and run a good bank."
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