Iran still has funds deposited in Malta and several other EU countries, despite its dispute with the EU, Al Arabiya news agency said today.
It was quoting an EU economic advisor, Mehrdad Emad, who said the Islamic republic still has several billions in euros stashed away in European banks despite a dispute between Western powers over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Emadi was responding to comments in Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency quoting central bank officials stating that Iran had withdrawn all of its money from European banks after the EU adopted a new round of sanctions targeting the country’s oil industry.
“Despite that I cannot name the exact sum right now, I can say that Iran still has more than a couple of billion euros in European banks,” Emadi told Trend website.
According to Emadi, Iran has funds deposited in accounts in Germany, Italy, Malta, Spain, Greece and Switzerland.
Along with the oil embargo, the EU also froze the assets of the Iranian Central Bank held in in euros. The Iranian banking sector was slapped with strict restrictions dictating that any transaction about 40,000 euros ($51,000) would have to be authorized by EU governments before being processed.
Iran says it has since 2008 been withdrawing all of its assets from European banks and either converting them to gold or transferring them to Asian banks.
China, India, Japan, and South Korea, combined purchase about 62 percent of Iran’s oil exports.
According to a cable leaked last September by whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, Iran had attempted several times to invest billions of dollars in the Maltese banking system.
A cable from early 2009 revealed that a senior Maltese finance ministry official informed the American embassy of an Iranian approach to Malta’s ambassador in France to express interest in “investing several billions of euros” in Malta.
US Charge d'Affaires Jason L. Davis was reported by wikileaks to have written that Alan Caruana, the Chief of Staff to the Finance Minister had been 'helpful in our successful attempt to persuade Malta to go beyond UN- and EU-approved sanctions in preventing Iran from establishing a presence in Malta's financial sector.'
He said that according to Mr Caruana, Iran had approached the Maltese Ambassador to France to express interest in "investing several billion euros" in Malta.
At a meeting with US officials, Mr Caruana shared the text of an email from Malta's Ambassador in Paris, which read in part "(The Iranian Ambassador to Paris) asked whether our Maltese banking system is autonomous or whether it is subject in any way to US or British control. I told him that we certainly adhered to EU rules, but he answered that that would not be a problem because France, for instance, is currently discussing the way to get Iran to invest 4 billion Euros. He said that he would be very interested to know more about the structures of our banking system as eventualy, if we are as sound as I made it seem and if we are not subject to US or British controls, Iran would seriously examine the possibility of investing money in Malta. I am not sure whether we are participating in some financial embargo and tried to avoid the question being asked directly to me."
The US official told Mr Caruana that he assumed, based on previous conversations, that Malta would have no interest in pursuing such an investment. Mr Caruana confirmed that this was the case and that he had already instructed the Ambassador (to Malta in France) to stand down.