$250M tokyo fine

Benjamin Lawsky has stared down another big bank.

The head of the New York State Department of Financial Services slapped the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi with a whopping $250 million fine for its role in funneling billions to rogue and terrorist nations, including Iran, Sudan and Burma.

The Department of Financial Services said that the Japanese financial giant was involved in 28,000 violations from 2002 to 2007. During that period, the bank aided nearly $100 billion in fund transfers involving Iran alone.

“Terrorism needs money to survive. We will continue to do everything we can to ensure banks don’t facilitate the flow of funds that could be used by terrorists and enemy nations,” Lawsky told The Post.

The regulator said that the Bank of Tokyo’s actions were particularly egregious and went as far as creating written instructions to employees telling them to strip out information about countries under US sanctions “in order to avoid freezing of funds.”

A relatively new cop on the regulatory beat, Lawsky has won fans and critics alike with his hard-charging tactics.

Lawsky drew sniping when he raced ahead of the US Treasury and other regulators to fine UK bank Standard Chartered, which agreed to pay $340 million to settle money-laundering allegations.

“We have and will continue to take a hard line in rooting out misconduct at banks that threatens our national security,” Lawsky said.

In December, the Bank of Tokyo, which holds the biggest single stake in US investment bank Morgan Stanley, agreed to pay the Treasury’s anti-money-laundering unit roughly $8.5 million to settle similar charges.

Treasury’s investigation focused on about 97 specific transactions.

A Bank of Tokyo spokesman has said publicly that the firm identified the problems and reported them to US authorities.

As part of the settlement, the bank must hire a consultant to oversee its international money transfer operations and report regularly to Lawsky’s agency for a year.