BNP Paribas operated in Sudan in the 2000s "in full knowledge" it was breaking international sanctions, according to the initial findings of a probe into the banking giant seen by AFP.
The bank said it would not comment on an ongoing investigation when contacted by AFP.
French prosecutors are conducting an inquiry into BNP's activities between 2002 and 2008 after a complaint accusing France's largest bank of complicity in crimes against humanity, genocide and torture that were committed during the conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur two decades ago.
Nine Sudanese refugees, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and the French Human Rights League (LDH) accused the bank and its Swiss subsidiary of facilitating those crimes by acting in the place of the Sudanese central bank and enabling militia to buy weapons.
The United Nations estimates 300,000 people were killed and 2,5 million displaced in the Darfur conflict.
Sudan's ex-president Omar al-Bashir, who was in power from 1989 to 2019, is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity over attacks by the Janjaweed militia against non-Arab minorities in Darfur.
Preliminary findings from the French probe, after police raided BNP's Paris and Geneva offices in June 2021, found that the bank was aware of sanctions targeting Sudan over the conflict.
"The BNP Paribas bank decided to continue banking operations with this country in full knowledge (of them), even acting in the place of US banks for clearing operations," according to the initial findings.
"It emerges from internal documents of BNP Paribas Switzerland that the bank was aware in real time of the evolution of international regulations," investigators found in December 2021.
Investigators said a warning from the bank's compliance department in late 2005 failed to have any consequences.
"It was only the US case and the severe risk of punishment incurred by BNP Paribas that ended these transactions," they added.
In 2014, BNP pleaded guilty in the United States to conspiring to violate US sanctions against the governments of Sudan, Iran and Cuba, and agreed to a fine of $8.9 billion.
It was found guilty of going "to elaborate lengths to conceal prohibited transactions, cover its tracks, and deceive US authorities," according to the US Department of Justice.
Illegal payments "were made on behalf of sanctioned entities in Sudan, which was subject to US embargo based on the Sudanese government's role in facilitating terrorism and committing human rights abuses," it said.
The French probe is the second criminal investigation opened against BNP in France for an alleged role in a foreign conflict, the other being for alleged complicity in the 1994 genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi minority.
