THE TELEGRAPH: BNP PARIBAS IGNORED RED FLAGS AND HAS PAID THE PRICE

In December 2005, the Dutch bank ABN Amro reached an $80m (£47m) settlement with US regulators over breaking sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan. And for one compliance official at BNP Paribas – where concerns had been raised about the same issues – the cat was now out of the bag.

“The dirty little secret isn’t so secret anymore, oui?” the official at the French bank’s North American operations wrote in an email. Surely, the lender would now have to clean up its links with financial institutions in sanctioned states.

The response from executives at the bank, however, was a resounding “non”.

Despite the red flags raised by the ABN Amro settlement, BNP Paribas wilfully ignored internal legal warnings, and continued to break sanctions for another seven years.

It wasn’t the first time that staff had raised the alarm. In August 2005 – four months before the ABN Amro settlement – another compliance official told senior individuals based at BNP Paribas’ Swiss headquarters that the bank’s complicated system of satellite banks, used to route transactions from Sudan, looked like nothing more than a deliberate attempt to evade sanctions.