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Standard Chartered scandal puts Sightsavers on alert

Fundraising | Tania Mason | 7 Aug 2012

Sightsavers says it is monitoring developments around the deception allegations against its major corporate donor Standard Chartered, but has declined to comment on the accusations against the bank at present.

Sightsavers is the main UK-based recipient of Standard Chartered’s global sightsaving programme Seeing is Believing, which has so far raised $50m for various charities working to tackle avoidable blindness around the world.

The bank has been accused by US authorities of hiding $250bn (£160bn) in transactions connected with Iran, in contravention of US law. The New York State Department of Financial Services has threatened to strip Standard Chartered of its right to operate in New York.

The Department said the bank’s “flagrantly deceptive actions” had left the US “vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes”.

The bank has vigorously denied the allegations, insisting that “the group does not believe the order issued … presents a full and accurate picture of the facts”. It said that it initiatied a review of its historical compliance some years ago, and had voluntarily approached the US agencies as long ago as January 2010 to tell them about it. Discussions with these authorities were still ongoing and so the bank was surprised that the US had suddenly made this announcement.

Standard Chartered claimed that it had already identified which historical transactions had not been fully compliant, and that these amounted to just $14m. 

However, investors did not wait around for the full facts to be established. More than a quarter of the value of Standard Chartered’s share price - around £11.5bn - has been wiped off since the allegations broke yesterday.

Seeing is Believing

Seeing is Believing was set up by Standard Chartered in 2003. The bank wanted to fund a long-term global community investment campaign that it hoped would have greater impact than various shorter ‘charity of the year’ partnerships. The programme is targeted to raise £100m by 2020, and is already halfway to meeting that goal.

Standard Chartered operates in 70 countries and employs around 87,000 people.

Other charities that have benefited from the programme include the German-based CBM and the New York-based Helen Keller International.

Seeing is Believing has supported Sightsavers’ work in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The bank match-funded donations from readers of the Financial Times last December after Sightsavers was chosen as the newspaper’s Christmas appeal charity. 

A Sightsavers spokeswoman told civilsociety.co.uk this morning: “Sightsavers is aware of the allegations being made against Standard Chartered and continues to monitor developments; however we have no comment to make with regards to the allegations at this time.”

She could not specify how much of the $50m raised so far by Seeing is Believing had been allocated to Sightsavers.

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