WASHINGTON -- More than $2 billion allegedly held on behalf of Iran in Citigroup Inc. accounts were secretly ordered frozen last year by a federal court in Manhattan, in what appears to be the biggest seizure of Iranian assets abroad since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Source:The Wall Street Journal
- The legal order, executed 18 months ago by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is under seal and hasn't been made public. The court acted in part because of information provided by the U.S. Treasury Department.
- President Barack Obama has pledged to enact new economic sanctions on Iran at year-end if Tehran doesn't respond to international calls for negotiations over its nuclear-fuel program.
- The frozen $2 billion stands at the center of an intensifying legal struggle between Luxembourg's Clearstream Banking S.A., the holder of the Citibank account, and the families of hundreds of U.S. Marines killed or injured in a 1983 terrorist attack on a Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.
- Clearstream is primarily a clearing house for financial trades and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Boerse AG. Luxembourg's bank secrecy laws have helped it grow into a major European financial center.
- There is no indication that Citibank knew the funds may ultimately belong to Iran. U.S. firms that do business with Iran face stiff civil and criminal penalties.
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