Lloyds TSB Bank plc has agreed to forfeit $350 million to the United States and to the New York County District Attorney’s Office for conducting illegal transactions on behalf of customers from Iran, Sudan and other countries on the U.S. sanctions list, the Department of Justice said today.
From 1995 to 2007, Lloyds’ offices in Britain and Dubai falsified outgoing U.S. wire transfers—removing customer names, bank names and addresses—allowing them to slip through the filters of U.S. financial institutions. The process, known as “repairing” or “stripping,” was designed to evade U.S. economic sanctions imposed against Iran, Sudan, and other countries, the department said.
The forfeiture stems from deferred prosecution agreements with the Department of Justice and the New York County District Attorney’s Office. The bank will forfeit $175 million to the United States and $175 million to New York County.
The U.S. portion will go into a department-administered fund that provides resources to cover the costs of disrupting and dismantling criminal organizations through the use of civil and criminal forfeiture.
“The Department will continue to use criminal enforcement measures against the knowing and intentional evasion of U.S. sanctions laws, particularly where such conduct has the potential to finance terrorist activities,” said Matthew Friedrich, acting assistant attorney general of the department’s Criminal Division.
Mia Levine, assistant chief of the of the Criminal Division's Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section, and trial attorney Frederick Reynolds prosecuted the case. The IRS-Criminal Investigation’s Washington Field Division handled the investigation, along with New York County District Attorney’s Office
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