Standard Chartered Retracts Chairman's Comments on Laundering

Standard Chartered has been forced to retract comments by its chairman that the U.K. bank's laundering of hundreds of billions of dollars on behalf of Iran was inadvertent.

Sir John Peace apologized Thursday for comments he made on March 5, when he told reporters that Standard Chartered had committed "no willful act to avoid sanctions" and described its breaches of U.S. anti-laundering laws as "clerical errors."

In August, Standard Chartered agreed to pay $340 million to settle charges by New York's Department of Financial Services that it tried to hide roughly 59,000 transactions worth $250 billion that it processed for Iranian customers over from 2001 to 2007. It agreed in December to pay $327 million to settle similar charges by the Manhattan district attorney, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve.

The settlements with the district attorney's office and Justice include deferred prosecution agreements that require Standard Chartered to accept responsibility for its conduct. "Under the terms of our agreement, we demanded a public repudiation and they complied," Joan Vollero, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said in an email.

"My statement that [Standard Chartered] 'had no willful act to avoid sanctions' was wrong, and directly contradicts [its] acceptance of responsibility in the deferred prosecution agreement and accompanying factual statement," Peace wrote in a letter posted on Standard Chartered's website.

Peace added that Standard Chartered "unequivocally acknowledges and accepts responsibility, on behalf of the bank and its employees, for past knowing and willful criminal conduct in violating U.S. economic sanctions, laws and regulations, and related New York criminal laws, as set out in the deferred prosecution agreement."

Peter Sands, Standard Chartered's chief executive, and Richard Meddings, its group finance director, joined in the apology.

The settlements with federal and state regulators require Standard Chartered to detail plans to ensure compliance with U.S. rules governing money laundering and to prevent violations from recurring.