Iran’s Bank Mellat rejects reports it got $1.6bn from UK Treasury
Iran’s Bank Mellat has issued an official statement rejecting reports that it had received compensations of up to $1.6 billion from the Britain's finance ministry over a litigation process that began in 2009, saying the money pocketed was actually around $100 million.
The statement published on Saturday on the Comprehensive Database of All Listed Companies (CODAL), a website run by Tehran’s stock exchange market, said that Bank Mellat had received 7,764,980,000 RLS as part of a settlement with the UK treasury.
The bank said the figure would equal to 91.352 million euros based on the official exchange rate announced by the Central Bank of Iran for Saturday.
The money would be around 61 million euros if calculated on the unofficial price of the currency in the Iranian market on the same day.
“All sums announced in the cyber media (that are) inconsistent with the above (mentioned) sums are rejected,” read the statement by Bank Mellat.
The announcement comes amid reports suggesting that the largest Iranian private bank, where the government has around 20 percent of stakes, had received damages of more than a billion dollar from the UK Treasury after the British side agreed to a settlement earlier this year to prevent further losses over a 2009 decision to blacklist the bank.
Britain’s Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that sanctions imposed on Bank Mellat over alleged links to Iran’s nuclear program had been unlawful, referring the case to London’s High Court, where the Iranian bank was seeking damages over the impacts of the sanctions on its reputation and goodwill in Britain and internationally, and other losses they had created.
However, the bank and the Treasury agreed in June this year and after a first session of the hearing in the High Court to resolve the legal row for an undisclosed sum.
Bank Mellat announced earlier this week that it had received the unspecified amount, telling shareholders via CODAL that they would benefit from the money as it boosts the position of the bank in the current financial year.
The Saturday statement to clarify the issue came a day after the Times said in a report(paywall) that Britain had used a third country to pay the damages to Bank Mellat to evade American sanctions that restrict financial dealings with Iran.
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