Akbar Komijani takes over as Iran central bank chief

Iran’s Cabinet has assigned Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Akbar Komijani with the responsibility to run the bank in just more than two months remaining from the incumbent government’s second term in office.

The official IRNA news agency said in a Sunday report that ministers in President Hassan Rouhani’s Cabinet had reached a decision to end Abdolnasser Hemmati’s tenure as CBI governor due to his decision to launch a presidential election campaign for the June 18 votes.

Ministers appreciated Hemmati’s services in his less than three years in the post while insisting that his presidential campaign would bar him from fulfilling sensitive responsibilities in field of monetary and exchange policy.

The Cabinet agreed that Komijani would take over all responsibilities and powers of the CBI governor until mid-August when the current government is expected to leave office.

The new central bank chief attended a high-profile government meeting for coordination of economic affairs on Sunday, according to the IRNA.

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Komijani, a graduate of economics from the US and a lecturer at the University of Tehran, has served as CBI deputy governor for the past seven years. The banker has held other senior positions in the CBI, including as deputy for economic affairs on two occasions from 1998 to 2007 and from 2013 to 2014.

Reports earlier this week suggested that Rouhani was planning to dismiss Hemmati after sources close to him revealed that the former CBI governor would use criticism of government's foreign exchange policies as a cornerstone of his presidential campaign.

Hemmati led the CBI through one of the most complicated financial periods for Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

While imposing terrorism-related sanctions on the CBI, the United States has effectively banned any transactions in the international banking system involving Iranian state-owned and private banks.

Hemmati said in an interview with the Bloomberg earlier this month that Iran has been pressing the US in indirect talks in Austria to lift its sanctions from the CBI if it wants Tehran to return to full compliance with a 2015 international deal on Tehran’s nuclear program.

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