President Barack Obama said he won’t intervene in negotiations between the US Department of Justice and France’s biggest bank over a potential $10 billion fine to settle US money-laundering allegations.
“The tradition of the United States is that the president does not meddle in prosecutions,’’ Obama said Thursday at a press conference in Brussels after a G7 summit.
Obama was responding to a growing French outcry about the fine and other stiff sanctions facing BNP Paribas. French President François Hollande is expected to broach the BNP affair during a dinner later Thursday with Obama.
Hollande fired a warning shot ahead of the meeting, saying there would be “economic and financial consequences across the euro zone” if BNP is forced to pay the “disproportionate penalty.”
On top of the multibillion-dollar fine, US authorities are pushing the bank to fire at least a dozen executives implicated the investigation, The Post reported.
The US probe led by the Justice Department found that BNP laundered more than $100 billion for blacklisted countries including Sudan, Iran and Cuba, according to people familiar with the matter.
Most of it flowed from the terrorist-sponsored state of Sudan, where Osama bin Laden set up his base of operations after he was booted from Saudi Arabia, the people said.