The U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday unanimously passed a bill aimed at foreign banks that provide financial services to Hezbollah, an Iran-backed, Lebanon-based Shiite militant group.
The House Committee on Foreign Affairs Thursday unanimously approved a measure that would penalize foreign banks that offer financial services to Hezbollah, an Iran-backed, Lebanon-based Shiite militant group.
U.S. officials Tuesday charged a blacklisted Chinese national with using shell companies to maintain accounts at American banks and offered five million dollars for information on his whereabouts.
The financial clearing subsidiary of Deutsche Börse AG will pay the U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions enforcer $152 million for holding money in New York-based accounts on behalf of Iran's central bank.
As early as Monday, banks will be able to do what has become seemingly unthinkable in the sanctions compliance field during recent years: ramp up their ties to Iran.
It's not a new message, but the world's governments are counting on the private sector to make sanctions against Iran (and other countries) work.
A U.S. official's threat last month of economic sanctions against four Chinese banks is likely to be toothless given economic and enforcement hurdles, say sanctions analysts.
Additional banking and trade restrictions that target the finance and supply of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs were passed by the U.N. Security Council Wednesday.
The Iran sanctions proposal under consideration at the United Nations could result in international financial institutions broadly dropping their ties to Iran's banking industry, say analysts.
The U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted a Labuan, Malaysia-based subsidiary of an Iranian financial institution Thursday over the bank's alleged ties to Iran's nuclear weapon's program.
Compliance officers at some of the world's largest financial institutions are concluding they need to create sanctions-specific programs to avoid regulatory penalties and tarnished reputations, according to a Deloitte survey released Monday.
The U.S. government Wednesday blacklisted a fifth Iranian bank for allegedly helping the country build nuclear weapons, the latest move in escalating efforts to hem in Iran and convince Europe to follow suit.
The U.S. Senate banking committee approved a bill that would ratchet up economic pressure on Iran and increase the budgets of two government agencies that enforce sanctions and counter-terrorist financing regulations.
The U.K. and the European Union will freeze the assets of Iran's largest bank, Bank Melli, over Iran's alleged plans to build a nuclear weapons program, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today during a joint press conference with President George Bush.
The bank, which is based in London, expects to reach a "resolution" with the U.S. Justice Department, U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and New York District Attorneys office, Lloyd's said in a statement Friday.
A UK High Court Justice said Thursday that terror laws that allow for the freezing of assets of suspected terrorists are unlawful. The judgment stems from an appeal brought by five individuals whose assets were frozen under a United Nations measure targeting terrorists.
The U.N. Security Council voted a third round of sanctions against Iran over its alleged ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. Fourteen of the 15 members of the Security Council supported a measure calling for tighter monitoring of Iranian financial institutions, travel bans, and cargo inspections.
The sanctions would call for increased international scrutiny of transactions with Iran's largest banks, including their international subsidiaries, and the freezing of assets of individuals tied to the country's purported nuclear weapons program.
Economic sanctions targeting Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons might not be achieving U.S. objectives and should be reconsidered, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in an audit report.
The designation would officially block all or part of Iran's 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's elite military unit, from dealing with U.S. financial institutions.