Standard Chartered failed adequately to check whether assets owned by some of its Indonesian clients were linked to crime or tax evasion, Guernsey’s financial regulator said.
The Guernsey Financial Services Commission said that it had found “serious” breaches of financial rules.
Standard Chartered, based in London, was created by a merger in 1969. Its business is skewed towards emerging markets, particularly in Asia.
The Guernsey commission fined Standard Chartered £140,000 over the failings in June last year and said that it would give its reasons later. Now it has said that Standard Chartered Guernsey took on $1.1 billion of Indonesian client assets without corroborating the source of the money; that it transferred $1.4 billion of Indonesian assets to another country “when there was concern regarding potential tax evasion”; and that it gave “insufficient regard” to whether funds had evaded taxes or were the proceeds of crime.
Source: The Times
