US freezes Irans $2b in Citigroup accounts

NEW YORK A US court, last year, secretly froze Irans assets worth more than US$2 billion in Citigroup Incorporated accounts, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has reported.
Citing legal documents, the newspaper said the move appeared to be the biggest seizure of Iranian assets abroad since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The US District Court for the Southern District of New York, acting in part on information provided by the US Treasury Department, ordered Citibank to freeze the money in June last year, the newspaper said. The money is in accounts held by Luxembourgs Clearstream Banking AG, a subsidiary of Germanys Deutsche Boerse AG, the newspaper said. Citibank, Clearstream and the Iranian government declined to comment, the Journal said. Clearstream has denied holding funds for Iran according to court documents cited by the newspaper, and is fighting to get the funds released.
US firms are forbidden from doing business with Iran. There is no indication Citibank knew the funds could have belonged to Iran, the newspaper said. The money is part of a battle between the families of US Marines killed or injured in a 1983 bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, that a US court ruled was organized by Iran.
In 2007, a judge ordered Tehran to pay the victims families US$2.7 billion in compensation. Lawyers for the families seeking compensation subpoenaed the Treasury Department to find information about Iranian assets held in the US, which led to a secret court order to freeze Clearstreams accounts at Citibank, the newspaper said. I was stunned when this money popped up in New York, Steven Perles, a lawyer representing the victims families, told the Journal. The case comes as US President Barack Obamas administration weighs whether to pursue more sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme.