Thursday, October 11, 2018

SWIFT Must End Its Services In Iran



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October 11, 2018

SWIFT Must End Its Services In Iran

(New York, NY) - United Against Nuclear Iran today called upon the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) to terminate its relationship with the Iranian banking system. Since 1973, almost all international bank transfers have been facilitated by SWIFT, a Brussels-based organization that connects more than 11,000 banks and other financial institutions and processes 30 million transaction messages each day.
In letters to the SWIFT organization and the major American and European banks that comprise its leadership board, UANI said it was critical that SWIFT "terminate its relationship with all Iranian Banks and Financial Institutions currently connected to the SWIFT network."

Since 2004, 16 European banks, including SWIFT members, have been fined a total of almost $3.5 billion by U.S. authorities for violating Iran financial sanctions.

From 2012 to 2016 and consistent with global sanctions, SWIFT responsibly barred Iranian access to its banking system. However, with the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), SWIFT reconnected most Iranian banks to the system, including Bank Mellat, Bank Melli, Bank Pasargad, Bank Tejerat, Bank Saderat, Ansar Bank, Mehr Eqtesad Bank, and Parsian Bank. SWIFT also reconnected the Central Bank of Iran, whose ex-Governor Valiollah Seif and Assistant Director were recently designated by the U.S. Treasury as Specially Designated Global Terrorists for helping the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Council-Quds Force funnel millions of dollars to the terrorist organization Hezbollah.

Clearly, rather than moderating its behavior and becoming a nation worthy of foreign investment since the adoption of the JCPOA, the Iranian regime has chosen to fund terrorist proxies Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Shiite militias, fomenting violence and instability throughout the Middle East.

With the reimposition of sweeping sanctions on the Iranian banking system and its well-documented ties to terrorist groups, UANI is calling on SWIFT to revert to its 2012-2016 policy of excluding Iran. The Islamic Republic uses deception and subterfuge to fund its illicit activities, threatening the integrity and security of the international financial system. Although it has been urged for years to adopt a more stringent regulatory framework, the Iranian regime at the highest levels has refused to implement the necessary reforms to comply with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing standards.

UANI asked the SWIFT members to respond to the question posed on September 25 by National Security Advisor John Bolton: "How can this enterprise [SWIFT] justify facilitating the evil escapades of the world's leading state sponsor of terror?"

SWIFT's ongoing service to sanction-designated Iranian financial institutions from November 5, 2018 is likely to breach its own prohibitions on the use of SWIFT services and products "for illegal, illicit or fraudulent purposes" and in ensuring that "no laws or regulations regarding banking, money transmission, securities, money laundering, terrorist financing, [and] economic sanctions" are violated, UANI wrote.

The UANI letters also warned against attempts by some European Union politicians to establish independent payment channels to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran. "These unprincipled, albeit vague, attempts to marginalize the United States and genuflect to Iran are unconscionable," UANI said. "European diplomatic and financial support of a pathologically anti-U.S. terror state dedicated to the destruction of America is, at best, myopic and, at worst, blatantly antagonistic to its friend, ally, or partner. Furthermore, any payment system that excludes the U.S. - especially one lacking the institutional expertise of the Office of Foreign Assets Control - will be, on its face, far less rigorous in terms of anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism."

In the weeks and months after President Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), dozens of businesses in the U.S. and Europe that had been involved in the Iranian market announced, despite protestations from EU officials in Brussels, that they would be shuttering their operations in the country. Renault, Volkswagen, Total, Volvo, Siemens, and other well-known corporations have announced their intention to void their nascent relationships with Iran. Interestingly, the European business community has been joined by leaders in central and south Asia and Taiwan in determining that despite the diplomatic and economic ties between their countries and Iran, their companies would no longer subject their companies to the myriad financial, reputational and security risks of engaging in the Iranian market.

"It is a credit to their good judgment and risk assessment capacity that these companies are voluntarily deciding to avoid the stain of supporting a regime like Iran's with cash and legitimacy," said UANI CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace. "These companies are leaving Iran or resolving to forego the risk until the regime in Tehran changes its behavior. The leaders of SWIFT should, consistent with its own rules, refuse to allow Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism - to flaunt international banking standards in support of its nefarious behavior."

To read the UANI letter to SWIFT, please click here







United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons. 

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