Barclays is understood to have voluntarily disclosed information on the dealings to the authorities after it became aware it might have broken sanctions.  As well as co-operating with the US investigation, the bank ran an internal inquiry into transactions conducted between January 2000 and July 2007.  This saw more than 175 current and former Barclays employees interviewed and in excess of 100m records examined.  Disclosures from Barclays' own investigation led to the bank being charged by the US Department of Justice with one count of violating the International Emergency Powers Act and another of trading with the enemy.  A spokesman for Barclays declined to comment.  The US authorities have not yet commented.  No Barclays staff are understood to have been disciplined as a result of the investigation and yesterday's settlement closes down the possibility of any follow-on action by the US authorities against individual employees.  In its interim financial results for the first half of 2010 published earlier this month, Barclays admitted that it was under investigation by the US authorities and had set aside £194m in the period to cover any fines.  Barclays is not the first UK bank to have been fined for breaking US sanctions.  Lloyds TSB was forced to pay $350m in January 2009 after being accused of helping clients in Iran, Libya and Sudan avoid US sanctions.  Like Lloyds, the Barclays settlement involves US prosecutors agreeing to a "deferred prosecution" whereby the charges against the bank will be postponed for two years with the expectation of being dropped thereafter.  American sanctions against Cuba go back to the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s, while sanctions against Libya were introduced in 1986 in reaction to Tripoli's support of terrorist organisations.  Sanctions against Iran have been in place since 1995, while Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, and Sudan were added to the list two years later.  However, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 led the US authorities to aggressively step up their investigations into terrorist financing, subsequently leading to several US and international banks being investigated and fined for violating sanctions.  Last December, Credit Suisse was hit with a $538m penalty for hiding several thousand transactions made by clients in Iran, Libya and Sudan, while in March American bank Wachovia paid $160m to settle charges that it had failed to prevent more than $100m being laundered by Colombian and Mexican drug gangs.
American authorities have fined Barclays nearly $300m (&pound;192m) for breaking    sanctions put in place against some of the world's most brutal regimes.