Marcy Wheeler: Standard Chartered Bank Admits Promontory’s Estimates of Its Iran Business Were Wrong

Yves here. A few quick comments on the New York state settlement. Some readers are unhappy that there wasn’t a prosecution. First, as we’ve written before, criminal prosecutions of big financial firms put them out of business (tons of customers are forbidden to do business with them) so they settle pronto (prosecuting individuals is another matter completely). Second, Lawsky is only a banking regulator and does not have prosecutorial powers. To do that, he would have needed Eric Schneiderman’s cooperation. But Lawksy’s boss, Andrew Cuomo and Schneiderman are rivals. And Schneiderman has thrown his lot in with the Obama Administration, which has been ferociously trying to undermine Lawsky. As Neil Barofksy noted in a Bloomberg story:

“I can’t think of another case where there has been such uniformity among federal regulators undercutting an enforcement case”

Marcy’s observation below is very important, and is being glossed over or even denied in the mainstream media. The Wall Street Journal has one of its all too common alternative reality editorial page pieces. Key snippet:

Of the $250 billion of transactions at issue, it now appears that $249 billion and change were legal at the time they occurred.

In a word, no.

By Marcy Wheeler. Cross posted from emptywheel

Standard Chartered just settled with NY’s Superintendent of Financial Services. The settlement–for $340 million and a monitor of SFS’ choosing–is less than some reports said the settlement might have been.

But here’s the detail I’m most interested in:

The New York State Department of Financial Services (“DFS”) and Standard Chartered Bank (“Bank”) have reached an agreement to settle the matters raised in the DFS Order dated August 6, 2012. The parties have agreed that the conduct at issue involved transactions of at least $250 billion. [my emphasis]

Just .1% fine, so not that big. But an admission that the scope of the fraud and the Iran business really did amount to $250 billion.

I find that interesting for two reasons. First, because it’s going to cause all kinds of headaches for the folks at Treasury who would like to let SCB off easy but ordinarily base settlements on the amount of the underlying activity.

More importantly, for me, because it demonstrates what a sham the Get Out of Jail Free industry is. A former OCC head and his minions at Promontory Financial Group claimed to have added it all up and determined that SCB only hid $14 million of transactions from Iran. SCB now says that Promontory was wrong.

By orders of magnitude.

Granted, SCB–and most of the people who pay Promontory to soft-pedal their crimes and risk–tried not to admit it had gotten that estimate from Promontory. Going forward, I expect we’ll see Promontory’s clients hide their involvement even more.

Still, this is a useful demonstration of how corrupt the Get Out of Jail Free industry is.