The British bank, Standard Chartered, has reached a settlement with regulators in New York who'd accused it of hiding billions of dollars worth of illegal transactions with Iran. The regulators said the bank would pay a penalty of $340m and install a monitor in its New York branch to oversee future transactions. From New York, Mark Gregory.
The bank was accused of helping Iran
launder
money by deleting any reference to Iran from records of transactions. The New York financial regulator claimed up to $250bn of deals were hidden in this way. Standard Chartered, though, said the figure was just $40m. The $340m penalty is large, but not as large as some other European banks have paid in similar circumstances – Britain's HSBC had set aside $700m to settle similar claims.
In his first appearance since defecting from Syria last week, the former Prime Minister Riad Hijab has
denounced
the government of President Assad. In a live televised statement from the Jordanian capital Amman, Mr Hijab said the Syrian government was collapsing morally, economically and militarily. He said it now only controlled 30% of the country; and he said that he did not want to lead but to serve as a soldier in the rebels' cause. Mr Hijab is the most senior official to have defected from Syria.
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A court in Egypt has sentenced 14 Islamist militants to death for an attack last year in northern Sinai in which several police and soldiers were killed. The men were also charged with founding an illegal group, Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad. The sentences come after an attack last week by suspected Islamist militants in Sinai, in which 16 border guards were killed.