Thread by @sjhmorris

Back in 2017 when I was @business I dug into Standard Chartered's trust unit in #Guernsey, which I found out had been doing some suspect tax-dodging deals with billions of Indonesian clients' money. Today regulators fined them £140,000. Paltry I know, but the report is damning

Some of the details don't look great. Here's how @StanChart initially onboarded clients in Guernsey and what was found when they finally examined them - 97% in breach of rules!

Here's the description of one client who claimed to be involved in 💎 industry (@wildfranz & @tbiesheuvel), ultimately emerged probably a front man for someone else

Here's the son/brother of the president/ex-president of a country not being added to the politically exposed persons list in Guernsey, for some reason best known to StanChart at the time

Then a sudden flurry of requests to move $1.4bn out of Guernsey just before the intro of common reporting standards, designed to root out global tax evasion. Red flags from staff were ignored and management actually "engaged in an unbalanced process to expedite the transfers" 🤔

The behaviour around this client looks especially bad, considering more #compliance / KYC concerns were ignored and the person was later linked to a major natural resources fraud in 2019

Here's the #Guernsey Financial Service Commission's conclusion: "The contraventions exposed the Licensee and the Bailiwick to a significant risk of financial crime and reputational damage". Quite.

Could be worth some coverage in the weekend editions eh @GuernseyPress @BBCGuernsey ?s

Here's the story: ft.com/content/9847a3…