TEHRAN: Iran said on Tuesday that it has started the procedures to retrieve billions of its dollars that have been released in the wake of the removal of sanctions against the country this past Saturday. Nevertheless, it said it has no plans to bring the released cash into the country, adding that the sum will be spent on imports of essential goods.
Valiollah Seif, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran, has been quoted by the media as saying that the CBI has sent 14 requests to move Iran’s assets from blocked accounts to third-party accounts before their final transfer to Iran.
Seif said a certain volume of the released cash has been transferred from a bank in Japan to another bank in Germany without mentioning any figures. He added that some of the released assets have also been transferred from a bank in South Korea to a branch of Bank Melli Iran (BMI) in the UAE. Seif said the CBI is still waiting for the remaining banks – most of them in Europe – to carry out the rest of the due transactions.
The official emphasized that Iran expects to retrieve around $32 billion as a result of the removal of the sanctions. He said that $28 billion belongs to the CBI and the rest to the Treasury of the Iranian government. “Nevertheless, importing this much amount of money into Iran is not logical,” said Seif. “We will try to use the amount for imports of essential goods into the country.”
Iran reached a deal with the P5+1 group of countries – the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany – over its nuclear energy program last July. Based on the deal which is called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran limited certain aspects of its nuclear energy activities in return for the removal of some economic sanctions against the country.
The JCPOA was implemented this past Saturday when Iran saw a range of US-led economic sanctions that had been imposed on it for multiple years eventually lifted.
Some key themes of the sanctions included draconian bans against investing in Iran’s oil and gas projects, selling planes to the country and also developing the Iranian auto industry among many other issues. Also, a central part of the sanctions concerned blocking Iran’s assets in overseas banks and putting restrictions on Iran’s banking transactions with the international financial institutions.
