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.
The chairman of a Senate committee vowed Thursday to block additional sanctions against Iran in an effort to protect last month's multilateral accord to suspend portions of the country's nuclear program.
Western financial institutions won't radically amend their sanctions controls in response to an agreement to limit Iran's nuclear program in exchange for a relaxation of banking restrictions, say former officials.
Despite tightened controls on interbank messaging, some bankers looking to hide the role of their blacklisted clients in international wires need only type a single key on their keyboard, according to experts.
Federal officials will weigh whether financial institutions can bank medical marijuana shops, New York's financial regulators asks two financial consultancies for data and more, in this week's news roundup.
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.
The U.S. Treasury Department Tuesday blacklisted seven individuals and 22 organizations, including two banks in Belarus and one in Iran over their alleged ties to Iran's nuclear program.
The U.S. Senate won't consider an Iran sanctions bill overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday until a negotiation deadline set by the Obama administration expires, say analysts.
The head of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee will soon introduce a bill to broaden sanctions against financial institutions and other businesses tied to Iran and the country's nuclear ambitions.
As more mainstream banking channels are closed off to Iran, its businesses have turned to smaller, more obscure financial providers beyond the reach of U.S. jurisdiction and influence. That has resulted in higher compliance costs for financial institutions with a presence in the United States.
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 sanctions are part of a "comprehensive" drive by the U.S. to increase pressure on Iran, said Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. That effort has been frustrated by the hesitation of the United Nations and international community in following the U.S.
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.
Two of the most stringent of several federal bills meant to increase pressure on Iran would forbid banks from processing transactions indirectly tied to Iranian entities. The bills, H.R.1400 and S.970, jointly called the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007, would prohibit u-turn transactions.
Over the past nine months U.S. officials have met with more than 40 banks to push for stronger international sanctions against Iran.
The sanctions put pressure on U.S. banks to conduct greater due diligence on correspondent accounts to determine if they are linked to the Middle Eastern nation. That will likely continue a trend of foreign institutions dropping business dealings with the country.