As the American authorities announced a record penaltyon Monday against BNP Paribas for violating United States rules on trading with blacklisted countries, the French political establishment had an unusual reaction: silence, reports The New York Times.
President François Hollande, who had appealed to President Obama for leniency and even buttonholed him in a Parisian restaurant in June to further press his case, was absent from the French airwaves. Equally quiet were his cabinet members and the French central bank chief, Christian Noyer, who had warned American prosecutors that the case could have dire repercussions for a bank that France deems too big to fail.
It was if, after all the lobbying, French officials had grimly concluded that — while onerous — the fine of about $8.9 billion and a guilty plea, were about the best outcome that could be hoped for, based on the facts of the case and the doggedness of American prosecutors.
Just a month earlier, ‘‘l’affaire BNP,’’ as the case is known here, had ignited trans-Atlantic diplomatic tensions. French officials stepped up to defend one of the country’s corporate icons, citing fears that what was then expected to be a $10 billion penalty and an unprecedented ban on the bank’s ability to conduct dollar-based trading activities in New York could destabilize BNP and cripple its ability to do business with international clients.
But the penalties announced on Monday in New York were somewhat more lenient.
Instead of an placing an immediate long-term ban on BNP’s dollar-clearing function, as the American authorities had originally proposed, BNP will be barred from processing oil and gas transactions in dollars for a year, beginning Jan. 1, 2015. Other forms of dollar-based transactions were spared.
Read more of this report from The New York Times.