The CEO of Standard Chartered PLC [LON: STAN] is in New York to defend the firm against accusations the bank "schemed" to hide $250 billion of illegal transactions with Iran.

Chief Executive Officer Peter Sands is readying himself to negotiate with prosecutor Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of New York's Department of Financial Services, or DFS, in a bid save its state banking license from being revoked, effectively locking the bank out of the U.S. market.

The meeting comes as reports indicated that lawyers for Standard Chartered Bank, or SCB, were preparing to meet with regulators on Wednesday to hammer out a deal, with Reuters reporting Lawsky was seeking a settlement of approximately $350 million.

It is not yet known if the hearing will be held in private or if Sands will be asked to attend.

"Peter is prepared to appear if required," a spokesman for the bank told the BBC.

Sands hit back at the DFS last week, saying that the bank had not violated U.S. sanctions and that he saw "no grounds" for revoking the lender's licence.

The DFS said it conducted an extensive investigation, which involved a review of more than 30,000 pages of documents, including internal SCB emails that "describe wilful and egregious violations of law."

"For almost 10 years, SCB schemed with the government of Iran and hid from regulators roughly 60,000 secret transactions, involving at least $250 billion and reaping SCB hundreds of millions of dollars in fees," the DFS said, describing the bank as a "rogue institution."

"SCB's actions left the U.S. financial system vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes and deprived law enforcement investigators of crucial information used to track all manner of criminal activity."

Standard Chartered has admitted to breaking U.S. sanctions on 300 transactions worth around $14 million.

U.S.regulators have targeted UK and other European banks for their dealings with countries that have U.S. sanctions against them since 2009.

The U.S. Justice Dept., the Office Of Foreign Assets Control and the Manhattan District Attorney's office have investigated a number of major UK and other European banks for similar conduct, which has resulted in more than $2.3 billion worth of fines.

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