More than 200 veterans and their families have filed a lawsuit against six banks, accusing them of helping Iran transfer millions of dollars to groups targeting U.S. soldiers during the war in Iraq.
The Wall Street Journal reports that five of the banks accused in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Brooklyn Monday, are HSBC, Barclays, Standard Chartered, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Credit Suisse. A sixth bank named in the suit is the Britain-based subsidiary of Bank Saderat Iran.
The suit alleges that the banks helped Iran move billions of dollars through the U.S. financial system, with some of the money ending up with Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies like Hezbollah, which orchestrated attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.
The Journal reports that several of those attacks are documented in the lawsuit, including one in 2007 in which four U.S. soldiers were abducted and later executed. The suit claims that documents retrieved from captured militants implicated Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guard Corps in that incident.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of a September jury verdict that found Jordan's Arab Bank liable for providing financing to the Hamas terror group. In that case, the jury ruled that the bank must compensate victims of over two dozen attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories linked to the group. Arab Bank is currently appealing the verdict.
The veterans' lawsuit asks for a jury trial and unspecified damages.
Some multinational banks have already paid millions of dollars to settle similar actions brought by the Justice Department. In 2010, Barclays paid $500 million to avoid prosecution for allegedly engaging in transactions with banks in countries targeted by U.S. sanctions, including Iran, Cuba, Libya, and Sudan. Earlier this year, France's largest lender, BNP Paribas agreed to pay $8.9 billion to settle claims it covered up $30 billion in transactions with Iran, Syria, and Sudan as recently as 2009.
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