Pass the salt and drop the fine - Hollande to raise BNP penalty with Obama at Paris dinner
French President François Hollande is to raise the massive fine faced by BNP Paribas when he has dinner with US President Barack Obama in a Paris restaurant on Thursday evening.
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Hollande called the 10-billion-dollar (7.4-billion-euro) fine facing the French bank for breaking US sanctions “unfair” and disproportionate at a press conference after the first day of the G7 meeting in Brussels on Wednesday.
“I respect the US’s legal system,” he said. “But at the same time nothing should jeopardise the partnership between France and the US because we are involved in other discussions and we expect reciprocity.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius has warned that the row over the fine could affect the European Union’s negotiations with the US for a transatlantic trade partnership.
BNP Paribas could also face a temporary ban on doing business in dollars
The heavy penalties are a way for the US to send a warning to European banks, French finance specialist Simone Wapler told RFI.
And Nobel-prize winning American economist Joseph Stigliz, at an economists’ forum in the south of France, said the US appears to be only targeting European banks.
Some American commentators have said that an attempt at political interference in a US legal case will receive a chilly reception.
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