Pakistan\u2019s largest bank, Habib Bank Limited (HBL), has clarified that it is \u201cvigorously\u201d contesting the “terror financing” charges case in the United States.
\nThe statement came in response to the Bloomberg report which claimed that the bank faces secondary liability in a case in the US after \u201cit failed to shake off claims of aiding and abetting al-Qaeda terrorism and joining in a conspiracy to launch attacks\u201d that killed or injured 370 plaintiffs or their family members.
\n\u201cThe allegations in the complaints are meritless, and the HBL is contesting them fully and vigorously,\u201d a statement issued by the HBL stated.
\nThe report further added that the plaintiffs in the three consolidated cases sufficiently allege that the attacks were planned or authorised by an organisation designated under the Immigration and Nationality Act as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation, including al Qaeda or one of the \u201csyndicate FTOs,\u201d which include Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and its alter ego AlRehmat Trust, the Afghan Taliban, including the Haqqani Network and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
\nThe plaintiffs sufficiently allege that the bank knew its customers were \u201cintegral to al-Qaeda\u2019s overall campaign of terrorism, carried out directly and by proxy,\u201d which is sufficient to allege general awareness, the report claimed.
\nThe statement said the public record is clear that HBL is unwavering in its commitment to combating the financing of terrorism, and\u2014as has been well documented\u2014its extensive global implementation of anti-money laundering compliance controls has been highly successful and lauded by regulators around the world.
\nThe HBL\u2019s motion was successful in two respects: \u201cThe court dismissed the primary liability claim and narrowed the case substantially.
\nThe court also stated that secondary liabilities will be evaluated following due legal proceedings and no judgement was passed by the court on this matter.\u201d
\nThe HBL said it proactively initiated a business transformation programme, in early 2018, around its control and compliance processes and systems to adhere to international standards.
\nThe HBL has made investments in management time and resources to strengthen its anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-financing terrorism (CFT) protocols by partnering with global experts in this field.
\n\u201cThe bank seeks to adhere to the highest standards of Compliance with international and country laws and regulations,\u201d it added.
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Pakistan\u2019s largest bank, Habib Bank Limited (HBL), has clarified that it is \u201cvigorously\u201d contesting the “terror financing” charges case in the United States. The statement…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1158,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}