Lai See | Standard Chartered Bank chairman eats humble pie

Someone has evidently had a word in the ear of Standard Chartered Bank chairman Sir John Peace, which has resulted in him having to make an embarrassing retraction. He has released a statement to the London and Hong Kong stock exchanges in which he says that in the press conference that followed the announcement of the bank's annual results at the beginning of March "I made certain statements that I very much regret and that were at best inaccurate".

He explains that he had been asked a question about lower employee bonuses and the fine that the bank paid to the US Department of Justice and the New York County District Attorney's Office in December last year. It will be recalled that the bank agreed to pay a US$340 million fine after it was accused of scheming with Iran to hide transactions worth billions of dollars from the US authorities. Responding to the question, Peace said: "We had no wilful act to avoid sanctions; you know, mistakes are made - clerical errors - and we talked about last year a number of transactions which clearly were clerical errors or mistakes that were made."

However, his attempt to downplay the incident backfired badly and he admits in the statement that "my statement that SCB 'had no wilful act to avoid sanctions' was wrong, and directly contradicts SCB's acceptance of responsibility in the deferred prosecution agreement and accompanying factual statement".

According to the Department of Justice, Standard Chartered "has accepted responsibility for its criminal conduct and that of its employees".

It seems odd that the chairman of the bank wasn't aware of what it had agreed to in New York.