International Banking Appeasement Policy Goals
Banks really have only one primary goal - to make money. They charge the little consumer for just about everything and payback minuscule amounts to keep your money in their bank. On the world stage, banks probably violate law in small ways and cover it up. Lots of recent examples. It really is nothing new.
In 1939, after Hitler had invaded and taken over Czechoslovakia earlier, the Bank of England secretly transferred all of Czechoslovakia's gold to Hitler's central Nazi bank. When the breach went public, citizens were outraged because there was no need to and it would help finance Hitler's war machine, which was just revving up. The gold had been transferred because the bank simply wanted to have a working relationship and financial ties with the emerging new German order to increase their income. Of course, we all know how that ended up. Granted, it was done when the world was at peace, but the storm clouds were quite evident on the horizon regarding Hitler's true vision. True, the request to ship the gold came from the countries main bank at Nazi gunpoint and the Bank of England could have simply not complied given the events of that time as a precaution (even if they did not know it was at gunpoint). Still, the goal was foster economic friendship of the bank.
Now, we have the US imposed sanctions on Iran. Again, a British bank, Standard Chartered, has been blatantly flouting the Iranian sanctions for, once again, profit since 2006. Internal documents and emails show a willful disregard to avoid the sanctions and to cover them up. One email from its director sums it up: " You fucking Americans, who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're not going to deal with Iranians?".
The bank would delete names of Iranian banks from digital records of US dollar transfers. Their lawyers directed that wire transfers should not identify the client or purpose of the payment. But those are not the only British banks that have been fined for violating US sanctions: HSBC-fined $700 million, Lloyds-fined $350 million and Barclays-finded $298 million.