Standard Chartered bank was fined $1.1 bil a few years ago for laundering money for Iran. They were fined for the same thing in 2012.
Deutsche Bank was fined $2 bil in 2023 for laundering for Russia. They were fined for the same thing in 2017. UBS was fined $4 bil for laundering and tax evasion in 2019. French bank BNP Paribas paid $9 bil in fines in 2014 for laundering for Iran. Credit Suisse has been caught / fined for laundering for Iran. And so on. Our banks work with all of these banks.
Looking outside the EU, I'd guess you could also transfer money to / from Iran by just making a stop over in Hong Kong or the UAE. But how would we know? The banking system is a black box of fraud.
they were caught and fined, that doesn’t happen with crypto exchanges?
While under the American umbrella of regulation neither bank is American is kind of notable I suppose.
Perhaps European regulators are not as strong is more a issue rather than regulations are not a good idea?
It took American financial systems for example to bring down the former head of FIFA Sepp Blatter , he was operating in Switzerland with no consequences and the history of Swiss banks working with nazis is not something one can forget either .
I am fairly sure that there is no formal way to send money from United States to Iran or North Korea by an individual or even a business without special government authorization.
Happy to be proven wrong if there ways to send/receive money to countries via banks today.
When we say North Korean or Iran we generally don’t mean people with those ethnic background[1] or even citizenship who have legal, physical and banking presence outside[2] these countries. We typically mean legal entities (both individuals and businesses) who are present within these regimes
Are they sanctions perfect ? Of course not, but they are still far better than what crypto exchanges do today
[1] that would be racist that is not the purpose of those sanctions
[2] the governments of these other geographies persumably have controls and oversight into these people
