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Iran underplays Luxembourg assets freeze

Politics Materials 7 March 2017 21:04 (UTC +04:00)
The Iranian government is underplaying a freeze on Iran’s assets in Luxembourg. A judge in Luxembourg recently put a freeze on $1.6 billion in assets belonging to the Central Bank of Iran
Iran underplays Luxembourg assets freeze

Tehran, Iran, Mar. 7

By Mehdi Sepahvand – Trend:

The Iranian government is underplaying a freeze on Iran’s assets in Luxembourg. A judge in Luxembourg recently put a freeze on $1.6 billion in assets belonging to the Central Bank of Iran.

However, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takhtravanchi in answer to reporters’ inquiry into the matter said that the freeze dates back years and has to do with economic sanctions that had been imposed on Iran in the early 2010s, ISNA news agency reported March 7.

The diplomat’s explanation comes with some deficiency, not to say twist of the fact.

Takhtravanchi did not say anything about the new Luxembourg court order, instead saying, “Nothing has changed over the past few days and our Central Bank lawyers are contacting the Luxembourg company to make us access the money.”

Nevertheless, the money itself remains in Luxembourg from previous years, when Iran could not access it due to sanctions, making Takhtravanchi partially true.

The Luxembourg judge issued the ruling under influence of American lawyers who were trying to find a way to pay victims of the 9/11 incident, which they claimed was partly caused by Iranian entities.

Over the last two decades, since Congress carved out a terrorism case exception to the general rule that people cannot use American courts to sue foreign governments, victims of attacks have racked up more than $50 billion in default judgments against Iran.

The American lawyers who could find little Iranian assets in the US to seize and channel to the victims have reached outside of the States to find Iranian assets abroad and use them instead.

In the present case, a group of attack victims who won one of the default judgments against Iran went to the Luxembourg court to try to enforce it, leading to the new freeze on Iranian assets.

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