Page 31 - IRANRptJul18

Austria’s Oberbank announces Iran withdrawal
Swiss bank, Indian lenders, German DZ Bank drop out after US nuclear deal exit
eurozone, which is also available to non-eurozone countries.
The CEO did not say if it was the main Saderat branch in Iran or the bank’s European operations that were connected to the system. But he did observe that despite being connected to TARGET2, the bank was yet to receive its SWIFT codes, making regular international banking transactions difficult.
The interview with Seyyedi implied that the bank was lobbying Brussels-based SWIFT to allow access to the system to facilitate banking payments between the EU and Iran.
The EU has previously announced that it stands ready to protect European banks and companies choosing to retain business with Iran in direct conflict with the unilateral sanctions being re-imposed on Tehran by the US. However, to date, only a handful of small provincial third-tier banks in Spain, Italy and Germany have agreed to cooperate with Iranian banks.
The move to open the gates for Saderat could be seen as Europe continuing to trade with Iran without leveraging the weight of possible sanctions on their institutions. Earlier in May, the EU said it would push the European Investment Bank —the EU’s nonprofit long-term lending institution—to work with Iran, something it has never done before. In response, the bank’s board rejected the proposal , pointing out that it raises much of its funding in the US.
Austria’s Oberbank on June 13 said it is to withdraw from Iran due to the sanctions the US plans to impose against the country and foreign companies that continue to do business there.
The move comes as a particular blow to the Iranians as Oberbank was one of the first Western banks to agree a deal to provide trade and investment finance to Iran. There was some hope that Oberbank would try harder to stay in the Islamic Republic after on March 31, just over a month before the US made its exit from the nuclear accord, Austria’s ambassador to Tehran, Stefan Scholz, rejected claims by some media outlets that the Austrian lender had cancelled a €1bn credit line to Tehran.
“Let me be clear, there is no reason to be overly pessimistic: from the mountain of MoUs, there are several pan-European high-profile projects that have entered the implementation phase or are close to it,” he said at the time. Oberbank said transactions and letters of credit related to Iran would from now only be provided for contracts signed before May 8, the day Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the multilateral nuclear deal. Payments would most probably no longer be possible from November 4, it added.
Swiss lender Banque de Commerce et de Placements (BCP) and India’s IndusInd and UCO l ast month said they were winding down Iran-related activities in the wake of Washington’s exit from the multilateral Iran nuclear deal , with heavy sanctions to be extended to foreign traders and investors who remain in business with the Islamic Republic.
Geneva-headquartered BCP, founded in 1963, has been among the players active in Iran-related trade finance in commodities, finance sources told Reuters. “We have suspended any new transaction related to Iran after May 8, 2018 and started the ‘wind down period’ within the framework of the OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Treasury] announcement,” BCP said in an emailed statement to the news agency.
The Federation of Indian Exporters Organisation (FIEO) told Reuters that the IndusInd and UCO banks, which facilitate trade with Iran, have informed Indian exporters they should wind up their deals with the Islamic Republic by August
31 IRAN Country Report July 2018 www.intellinews.com