IslamicFinance.de

The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) has announced plans to close down Future Bank, a joint venture between two Iranian lenders – Bank Saderat and Bank Melli – and Bahrain’s Ahli United Bank, said a report. The CBB said it intends to submit a petition to the competent court for compulsory liquidation of the Bahrain-based retail bank, reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.

Abdolnaser Hemmati, the CEO of the National Bank of Iran (known as Bank Melli Iran or BMI), said that frozen assets of the bank at the Deutsche Bundesbank were freed. Following the move, 17 BMI subsidiaries will be able to work abroad. Deutsche Bundesbank authorized BMI’s branch in Hamburg, and the BMI’s Dubai branch has also been freed of transaction barriers previously in place under sanctions. Measures have been taken to launch the London branch of the BMI. Only a UK permit is left to be issued, he added. Mir Business Bank CJSC, a BMI branch in Moscow, can also resume its full operations, according to Hemmati. In one week, all BMI branches abroad will be operational, he stated.

After a Hamas-sponsored cafeteria bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a federal complaint was filed against Iran's central bank in Washington D.C., that ended in a $12.9 million judgment against the republic. Other lawsuits alleging that Iran bankrolled terrorism followed, leading to awards of $20 million for a bombing of a Jerusalem restaurant, $350 million for a 1990 mass shooting, and $590 million for the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Bank Melli has set forth numerous creative arguments as to why it shouldn't be liable for Iran's debt. However, the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday that those arguments cannot save it from paying nearly $17.6 million to the victims of terrorist attacks in Israel, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

Iran has four banks in Britain and will set up two new banks in London in near future, Governor of Central Bank of Iran Valiollah Seif said on Sunday. He made the remarks on the sidelines of a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond. Speaking to IRNA, he said the two banks to be set up are the London branch of bank Melli of Iran and Persian International Bank. In the meeting with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and his entourage, the two sides studied grounds for expansion of cooperation and the history of banking cooperation as well as existing grounds for expansion of such cooperation, he said. UK delegation voiced their willingness of the British banks to come back and resume operation in Iran, he said.

14 Iranian banks are involved in the famous 2011 $3-billion embezzlement case. Iran's prosecutor general Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei said that state-run Bank Saderat and Bank Melli were the main banks involved in the case. The prosecutor general went on to say that seven MPs who were accused of involvement in the case acquitted due to lack of evidences. Thirty-nine persons were accused of involvement in the case, and several high-ranking officials including certain persons in judiciary, parliament and presidential administration were persecuted or arrested. In addition to death and life sentences, some defendants banned from government jobs.

A special group of police officers will be assembled and sent to Canada for searching and arresting the former head of Bank Melli Iran, Mahmoud Reza Khavari. Since Canadian officials haven't found Khavari yet, Iranian police are asking for one week in order to search for him in Canada. The fraud case originally started in 2007 and involved the use of fraudulent documents to obtain credit for an investment company. Khavari, as the head of Bank Melli Iran, was reportedly involved in the fraud case. However, Khavari escaped to Canada. Iran requested Interpol to announce an international search for him. In June of 2012, Fars news agency reported that Interpol placed Khavari on its Red Notice Wanted list.

Abdonnaser Hemmati has been elected by the board of directors of Bank Melli Iran as the bank’s new governor, replacing Farshad Heidari. Heidari had been appointed as the governor of the bank after Mahmoud Reza Khavari, its former governor, fled to Canada after a $2.6 billion financial fraud case was uncovered in 2011. Economy minister Ali Tayyebnia is scheduled to officially install Hemmati at the post by Friday. Hemmati has served as the managing director of Sina Bank and the chairman of Iran’s Central Insurance Company.

Four people were sentenced to death on charges of corruption and disrupting the country’s economic system by the Iran Judiciary. The four are Mahafarid Amir-Khosravi, Behdad Behzadi, his legal advisor, Iraj Shoja, his financial solicitor and Saeed Kiani Rezazadeh, head of the Ahvaz branch of Saderat Bank. Other defendants were handed down sentences including imprisonment and cash fines. The defendants stood trial for misappropriating a total of USD2.6 billion of funds by using forged documents to obtain credit from banks to purchase state-owned companies. However, almost none of the companies involved in this case were ordered closed by the court.