渣打悲剧中谁是真正的恶人?

Yet another Shakespearean banking tragedy opened this week, with Standard Chartered starring this time as the villainous rogue. The day of reckoning will be Wednesday, when the New York Department of Financial Services will hear the bank's defence against charges of hiding the involvement of Iranian government clients in 60,000 wire transactions, worth at least $250bn. Call it the Ides of August.
上周银行业又有一出莎士比亚悲剧上演，此次扮演卑鄙恶棍的是渣打银行(Standard Chartered)。"审判日"就是周三（8月15日），届时纽约州金融服务局(New York state Department of Financial Services)将听取渣打的辩护证词，该行此前被控隐瞒参与伊朗政府客户约6万笔、至少价值2500亿美元的电汇交易。此次事件完全称得上是"八月风云"。

That hearing will focus on "wire stripping". Standard Chartered employees allegedly hid the fact that wire transfers to New York were coming from Iranian government-owned institutions by stripping out references to Iran from wire instructions. Standard Chartered called this a "repair procedure," and insists it was permitted.
法庭聆讯将以"电汇代码消除"(wire stripping)为焦点。渣打员工涉嫌通过删除电汇指令中提到伊朗的部分，隐瞒汇往纽约的款项来自伊朗政府下属机构的事实。渣打将此类操作称作"修正流程"，并坚称其符合法规要求。

Media commentators and bank analysts have suggested that the evil actors in this drama were the employees who did the "repairs" and the managers who supervised them. Others have absolved Standard Chartered, accepting the bank's argument that the scope of wrongdoing was minimal and had nothing to do with terrorism. But the New York regulators' order centres on the bank's general counsel and compliance offices. This focus on lawyers is important.
媒体评论员和银行分析师指出，在这出戏中扮演恶人的演员是那些执行"修正"程序的员工以及管理他们的上级经理。其他人则认为渣打无罪，接受该行有关违规操作的范围极小以及绝不牵涉恐怖主义的说辞。但纽约州监管当局的报告将矛头对准了该行法律总顾问办公室以及合规办公室。这种对银行内部律师的关注引人回味。

Among the most incriminating documents cited in the order are memoranda and emails from the bank's attorneys, who allegedly advised that wire instructions should not identify the names of Iranian clients because that would trigger scrutiny in New York. Legal and compliance officers were allegedly involved in a plan called Project Gazelle, which sought to build the bank's business with Iranian clients without exposing the New York branch "to the risk of a breach of sanctions". Given these allegations, the opening line at next week's hearing might be: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
报告引用的最能将渣打治罪的文件之一，是渣打律师团队的备忘录和电子邮件，他们涉嫌建议在电汇指令中不列明伊朗客户的名称，因为这可能触发来自纽约监管当局的检查。该行法律及合规主管则被指控参与"瞪羚计划"(Project Gazelle)，该计划的目的是在不给纽约分行带来"违反制裁禁令风险"的情况下，建立与伊朗客户的业务往来。鉴于以上指控内容，本周听证会的开场白有可能是："我们要做的第一件事，是把律师通通干掉。"

Indeed, the order puts the bank's senior attorneys and compliance officers at the heart of the wire stripping scheme, even when outside counsel advised otherwise. As early as 1995, soon after President Bill Clinton announced economic sanctions against Iran, the bank's general counsel allegedly "embraced a framework for regulatory evasion". He allegedly strategised about how to avoid scrutiny by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, known as OFAC, and instructed employees that a memorandum describing the plan to avoid regulatory compliance was "highly confidential and MUST NOT be sent to the US".
报告实际上将渣打的高级律师以及合规主管们置于电汇代码消除阴谋的核心，而当时该行的外部法律顾问曾给出与内部律师相反的意见。报告指出，早在1995年，当时的美国总统比尔•克林顿(Bill Clinton)宣布对伊朗实施经济制裁后不久，渣打的法律总顾问就"采纳了一整套逃避监管的方案"。据称，他设计了躲避外国资产控制办公室（Office of Foreign Assets Control，简称OFAC）检查的策略，并向手下员工指示，一份描述该行逃避监管合规要求计划的备忘录是"高度机密并且绝不能被传至美国"。