Brussels, 05/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 4 June, the president of France, François Hollande, warned of the impact on the European economy of any penalties by the US justice system against French bank BNP Paribas.
On the fringes of the G7 summit in Brussels, Hollande said the BNP was not only the biggest bank in France, but the leading bank in the eurozone. He said it was his duty to intervene politically with the US authorities not simply because he is the president of France but also because he is aware of the risks of any unfair, disproportionate sanctions but of such a scale that they could have financial consequences for the whole of the eurozone. He also warned of the risk of suspicions that might be generated about the strength of European banking.
Hollande said he would be discussing the matter with the US president, Barack Obama, over dinner on Thursday evening in Paris, the day before the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944.
Hollande said the US justice system was independent and he was entitled to call for a proportionate response to the allegations made against the French bank, especially, he said, at a time when people are talking growth, jobs and support for business and the financing of the real economy, a subject that was on the agenda for the G7 Summit.
BNP Paribas is accused by the US justice system of ignoring the embargoes on Iran, Cuba and Sudan from 2002 to 2009 by hiding transactions carried out in US dollars. It runs the risk of a fine that experts say could be to the order of $10 billion. BNP Paribas is one of the world's leading banks on Wall Street, where its dollar transactions risk being temporarily halted under the potential sanctions.
If the sanctions materialise, they would cause the bank serious financial problems at a time when its balance sheet is being assessed by the European Central Bank and the European Banking Authority.
Hollande stressed that BNP had not violated any French or European regulations. (MB)