The landmark settlement expected Monday between U.S. authorities and BNP Paribas SA began to take shape last summer, after bank executives flew to New York to share an embarrassing admission: The French bank had been processing potentially illicit dollar transactions with countries blacklisted by Washington years after the U.S. began investigating the lender, the Wall Street Journal reported today. U.S. authorities are expected to announce today that BNP Paribas will pay nearly $9 billion in penalties and plead guilty to attempting to conceal some $30 billion in transactions with sanctioned countries. From January of next year and for a full year, the bank is also expected to lose its capacity to perform certain dollar-clearing transactions.
