Banking Criminals in Very High Places

The UK bank Barclays admitted altering its books for more than 10 years to hide hundreds of millions of dollars from countries such as Cuba, Libya and Iran.

In May, ABN Amro, now part of Royal Bank of Scotland Group, agreed to pay $US500m to end allegations that it helped Iran, Libya, Sudan and Cuba evade US sanctions by “stripping” the identities of transactions to conceal the countries from which they originated.

Last December, Credit Suisse Group paid $US536m to settle similar violations involving transactions with Iran. In early 2009, a unit of London-based Lloyds Banking Group paid $US350 million related to similar charges by US and New York prosecutors, who accused the bank of masking the origin of payments from Iran and Sudan.

The $331m settlement-agreement of criminal charges is an embarrassment for Barclays, which became a major player on Wall Street by snapping up the collapsed US operations of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and has been trying to burnish the UK bank's reputation on both sides of the Atlantic as a good corporate citizen.

A federal court filing said Barclays “accepts and acknowledges responsibility for its conduct and that of its employees”. US officials said the bank altered payment messages or deleted information about sanctioned countries. More