FDD Applauds SWIFT for Expelling Iranian Banks
March 15 2012 - 11:38AM
Business Wire
SWIFT, a top clearinghouse for international financial
transactions, announced today that it will expel Iranian banks in
response to European Union sanctions.
The Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Transactions, a secure financial messaging platform used by over
10,000 international institutions in 210 countries, announced in a
statement on Thursday that it would stop providing its financial
messaging services to Iranian banks that are subject to EU
sanctions. SWIFT is incorporated under Belgian law.
“This EU decision forces SWIFT to take action,” said Lázaro
Campos, CEO of SWIFT. “Disconnecting banks is an extraordinary and
unprecedented step for SWIFT. It is a direct result of
international and multilateral action to intensify financial
sanctions against Iran.”
SWIFT will disconnect the sanctioned Iranian banks on Saturday,
March 17 at 1600 GMT.
“Iran is the first country in history to be
thrown out of SWIFT,” said FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz,
who has advised the Obama administration and key
congressional offices on SWIFT and other sanctions
measures. “This could deny Iran’s banks the ability to
move billions of dollars, and ratchet up the economic
pressure on leaders who have so far refused to reach a negotiated
settlement on their illegal nuclear weapons program.”
In 2010, 19 Iranian banks and 25 Iranian entities reportedly
used SWIFT more than 2 million times. These transactions,
the Wall Street Journal notes, amounted to $35 billion in
trade with Europe alone, and they almost certainly violate existing
sanctions laws.
FDD applauds Obama administration officials for their continuing
diplomatic efforts with the EU and SWIFT, and Senate Banking
Committee chairman Tim Johnson (D-SD) and ranking member Richard
Shelby (R-AL) for unanimously adopting the amendment that produced
this result. Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) initially led the charge for
this amendment in the Senate, and Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
and Roger Wicker (R-MS) carried forward his efforts.
In the House of Representatives, Foreign Affairs Committee
chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and Reps. Brad Sherman
(D-CA), Ed Royce (R-CA) and Steve Chabot (R-OH) advanced a
companion bill with even tougher provisions, which would have
imposed sanctions on SWIFT if did not comply.
“SWIFT’s unprecedented move shows that it views the threat of a
nuclear Iran with the utmost concern,” says FDD’s vice president
for research, Jonathan Schanzer, a former analyst in the Office of
Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the U.S. Department of the
Treasury. “This is the most widely-used electronic banking system
in the world. It’s hard to imagine a more meaningful measure.”
To discuss the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ work on
U.S. and EU sanctions on Iran, or schedule interviews with Mr.
Dubowitz, Mr. Schanzer, or any of FDD’s other experts, please
contact David Donadio at ddonadio@defenddemocracy.org.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a non-profit,
non-partisan policy institute dedicated exclusively to promoting
pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies
that drive terrorism.