A US court has fined French banking giant BNP Paribas $140m and sentenced to five years probation in connection with an $8.9bn settlement resolving claims that it violated sanctions against Sudan, Cuba and Iran.
US district judge Lorna Schofield in Manhattan has formally ordered the French bank to forfeit $8.83bn and pay a $140m fine as part of a sentence that also called for BNP Paribas to enhance its compliance procedures and policies.
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The sentencing follows BNP Paribas’s guilty plea in July 2014 to conspiring from 2004 to 2012 to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act.
Assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell said: "BNP deliberately disregarded the law and provided rogue nations, and Sudan in particular, with vital access to the global financial system, helping that country’s lawless government to harbor and support terrorists and to persecute its own people."
According to the Justice Department, the case sets a maiden example when a financial institution has been pleaded guilty for violating US economic sanctions with a penalty which is the largest ever imposed in a criminal case.
BNP’s general counsel Georges Dirani has confirmed that the bank has accepted "full responsibility for its conduct."
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By GlobalData"There’s no question the organization will not tolerate the kind of behavior we have seen in this case," he added.
