The manager of Bank Melli Iran (BMI) branch in Hamburg said a regional court has voted in favor of the bank, requiring Deutsche Telekom to reactivate services for Iranian bank branches in Germany.
Speaking to IRIB News, Mehran Dehghan said the court decided in favor of the BMI in the final hearing, rejecting an appeal by Deutsche Telekom.
"The ruling will be announced next week," Dehghan said.
Based on the verdict the German telecom giant is required to also offer services to other Iranian companies in that country.
BMI brought up the case in 2018 after Germany's partly state-owned telecom provider suspended BMI’s Hamburg office, under the assumption that it could no longer make payments due to the US economic sanctions.
In a preliminary injunction, the Hamburg district court ordered Deutsche Telekom to reactivate the services to BMI until the its contract expires, arguing that its stance was not valid enough for termination without notice, especially as the bank had met all its fanatical commitments and was solvent.
Later, Deutsche Telekom again notified BMI of the termination of all contracts ‘as of the earliest possible date’. No reasons were provided.
BMI, on the other hand, asserted in court that the termination was uncalled for and argued that the services provided by Telekom Deutschland formed the basis of the internal and external communication structure of the bank in Germany and were essential for its business.
The higher regional court of Hamburg later referred the case to the European Court of Justice to decide the EU Blocking Statute's role here.
In 2018, the former US president Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and imposed new sanctions on Iranian companies. US sanctions had been lifted under a historic agreement between Iran the six world powers in 2015.
Last year the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg said that European companies could end contracts with Iranian firms if the deals would possibly lead to "disproportionate economic loss."
According to the ECJ, Telekom Deutschland had argued in the proceedings that the blocking regulation does not affect its right to declare the ordinary termination of a contract without giving reasons.
The court in Hamburg was to decide whether upholding the contract with BMI would expose Deutsche Telekom, which makes about half of its turnover in the US, to such a disproportionate economic loss.
As it turned out, the court’s ruling obviously was not in favor of the German company.
