Frozen Iranian funds transferred to Swiss bank: S.Korean media
South Korean media reported on Monday that Iranian funds that had been blocked in South Korea were transferred to Switzerland’s central bank last week for transfer to Iran.
Yonhap Infomax cited an unnamed currency market source as saying that the Swiss National Bank plans to exchange its $6 billion holdings in won for dollars and then euros in the currency market.
According to the report, the Swiss central bank will convert about 300 billion won ($223.85 million) to 400 billion each day for the next five weeks.
An official at South Korea’s finance ministry declined to confirm the report, citing the legal and diplomatic sensitivity of the matter.
The Iranian funds were illegally blocked in South Korea under the pretext of US sanctions.
The United States, under former president Donald Trump, abandoned the 2015 deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May 2018 and reinstated the sanctions that the agreement had lifted.
Recently, Iran and the US reached an agreement, mediated by a third country, to resolve some issues. The deal includes an exchange of prisoners as a humanitarian issue and also the unfreezing of Iranian assets illegally blocked overseas.
The Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said last week that there is no connection between a prisoner exchange agreement with the United States and the release of Tehran’s assets.
Last Monday, Amir-Abdollahian said the process to transfer released Iranian assets from South Korean banks to a European bank started on August 10 and will be completed in several phases.
He added that the funds would be converted into euros within a few weeks before being deposited into another bank in a regional country.
Central Bank of Iran Governor Mohammad Reza Farzin has said that Iranian funds will be deposited to accounts held by Iranian banks in Qatar.
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