Is the US using bank fines to bring allies into line against Russia?

Here’s one for all you conspiracy nuts out there, prompted by readers’ comments on my recent item about whether BP has been unjustly targeted by the US political and judicial establishment. I gather there’s a theory that the hounding of non-US banks by the US Department of Justice for sanctions-busting and trading misdemeanours has a more sinister foreign-policy impetus behind it. Notably — according to Conflicts Forum, a website I’m told is breakfast reading for trainee spooks — the $9 billion fine imposed by US authorities on BNP of France for financing trade with Iran, Sudan and Cuba may also have been intended to punish the French for refusing to cancel their contract to build two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships for the Russian navy, about which I wrote in August.

Described by French foreign minister Laurent Fabius as ‘unfair and unilateral’, the BNP fine was announced shortly before Barack Obama’s June visit for talks with François Hollande — and Vladimir Putin later told an audience of Russian officials that the Kremlin knew exactly what was afoot: ‘We even know [the Americans] hinted that if the French don’t deliver the Mistrals, they would quietly get rid of the sanctions against the bank, or at least minimise them. What is that if not blackmail?’

Likewise, timely revelations in the Wall Street Journal in July of an investigation of Deutsche Bank’s US operations by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, uncovering ‘a litany of serious financial reporting problems’, might have been a ‘tap on Angela Merkel’s shoulder, reminding her to vote “yes” on the next round of Russia sanctions’, says Conflicts Forum. No fine was applied but there was a threat of restrictions on Deutsche’s US activities, which make up a quarter of its global portfolio — and an implied warning to the rest of German business that has sought to protect €36 billion of Russian trade.