UNITED FRONT: The Bank of England criticized New York financial regulators for unilaterally accusing Standard Chartered of illegally laundering oil money for Iran, while the chief executive of the embattled London bank denied claims of systematic sanctions-busting.

CALLED OUT: The New York State Department of Financial Services this week accused Standard Chartered of laundering $250 billion of Iranian oil money over a decade in defiance of an American order prohibiting such transactions. Federal U.S. agencies have remained strangely silent and the word is that there was a settlement in the works when the allegations surfaced.

THERE IT IS: Bank CEO Peter Sands rejected the central accusation that bank officials had conspired with Iran to evade U.S. sanctions, though he acknowledged that the bank had violated U.S. sanctions law in about 300 transactions from 2001 to 2007. But he said they were errors, not calculated fraud. He described the New York regulators' wider accusations as groundless.