Standard Chartered Bank has agreed to pay $300 million and enact several business changes because of anti-money laundering compliance failures.
The settlement, which was announced by the New York State Department of Financial Services, will require the bank to take several steps, including the exit of certain high-risk client relationships in the United Arab Emirates. Standard and Chartered also agreed to suspend dollar clearing for high-risk retail clients of its Hong Kong subsidiary.
Both the Hong Kong and Emirates businesses had a "significant amount of the potentially high-risk transactions" that the bank's previous anti-money laundering system failed to detect, according to a NYDFS press release.
The settlement arises from a 2012 agreement between Standard Chartered and the regulator, which allowed the NYDFS to install a monitor at the bank.
"If a bank fails to live up to its commitments, there should be consequences," Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of NYDFS, said in the release. "That is particularly true in an area as serious as anti-money-laundering compliance, which is vital to helping prevent terrorism and vile human rights abuses."
—By CNBC staff