BNP PARIBAS HANDS OVER OIL TRADING FILES AS IT FACES POTENTIAL $10BN FINE

BNP Paribas, which is facing a potential $10bn fine for breaking U.S. sanctions, has handed over to U.S. investigators files covering many years of its dealings with leading companies in the oil market.

Reuters reports that a dozen former BNP insiders and senior trading executives said it had in recent months handed over a host of documents relating to its oil dealings with Sudan and Iran, including details on trading houses' and oil majors' involvement in the trades.

Before now, all that had been known about the probe was that U.S. authorities were investigating whether BNP evaded sanctions relating to Sudan, Iran and Cuba and if it stripped identifying information from related dollar wire transfers to be cleared by the U.S. financial system.

The sources told Reuters that the probe has so far mostly focused on the bank's dollar financing of oil trade out of Sudan - a much smaller producer than Iran - between 2002 and 2009, long after Washington imposed sanctions against the government in Khartoum in 1997 over human rights violations. It extended the sanctions in 2007.

To access the complete Reuters article hit the link below:

BNP hands years of oil trading files to U.S. in $10 billion probe