FX.co ★ U.S. goes on collecting fines from European banks

The U.S. authorities are negotiating with French banking group BNP Paribas over alleged sanctions violations at one point suggested that France's biggest bank pay a penalty as high as $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The sources said that number was only proposed as a negotiating tactic in response to an offer from BNP of $1.1 billion. A $16 billion settlement would have pushed BNP's penalty above the biggest ever for a bank—JPMorgan Chase, which paid $13 billion last year to resolve a number of civil mortgage-related allegations. This time, the authorities have gone after the foreign bank over violating U.S. sanctions on Iran, Sudan, and Cuba between 2002 and 2009, alleging the bank did business with entities associated with sanctioned countries, or stripped information from wire transfers so they could pass through the U.S. financial system without raising red flags. The Justice Department and BNP Paribas declined to comment on the negotiations. The 2013 annual income of BNP Paribas totaled 8.2 billion euros ($11.2 billion). The prosecutors have also pushed the bank to plead guilty to criminal charges as part of a resolution, the sources have said. The bank has said it is cooperating with the prosecution. BNP Paribas Chief Operating Officer Georges Chodron de Courcel was asked to leave his post at the end of June a few months before his retirement. The early discharge of one of the top managers is associated with his involvement in the wrongdoing, which led to the investigation.