The family of U.S. army Staff Sgt. Christopher Ward, whose body was returned to the U.S. after he was killed in a terror attack days earlier, is suing the bank they claimed help finance Al Qaeda’s bomb making.
AP
A New York-based bank helped finance Al Qaeda’s bomb-making operations in Afghanistan despite warnings from government officials, the families of two U.S. military members killed by the terror group claimed in a lawsuit.
Relatives of Wilbel Robles-Santa, 25, of Puerto Rico, and Christopher Ward, 24, of Tennessee — both of whom were killed by improvised explosive devices on April 6, 2013, in Afghanistan — sued Standard Chartered Bank in Manhattan federal court Tuesday.
The families claim the bank provided financial services to the Fatima Group in Pakistan despite knowing it was sending “an unending supply” of calcium ammonium nitrate — the primary component in IEDs — to Al Qaeda, according to the court filing.
U.S. government officials met with senior bankers at Standard Chartered’s Manhattan office in 2013, to urge them to stop aiding the terrorist attacks, but the bank’s response was “utterly useless,” according to court papers.
“Standard Chartered knowingly and wantonly sacrificed American lives to increase its own profits,” the Anti-Terrorism Act lawsuit alleges.
The U.S. official who tried to warn the banks about its dealings with the Fatima Group was Lieutenant General Mike Barbero, The Mail on Sunday reported in December 2019.
It’s at least the second time Standard Charted Bank has been accused of aiding terrorism.
More than 100 military families sued the bank alongside Deutsche Bank in August 2021 in Brooklyn Federal Court for acting as “laundromats” for groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban to secretly move their money, according to the filing.
The case was dismissed on Jan. 3, 2023, but is under appeal in the Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals.
Standard Chartered Bank did not respond to requests for comment.
