UK’s High Court has ruled that a $4 billion damages trial brought by Iran’s Bank Mellat against the Treasury should proceed after it rejected the UK government’s attempt to delay the hearing, the Financial Times reported. Bank Mellat is suing the government for losses after it succeeded in 2014 in challenging a 2009 Treasury order prohibiting UK financial institutions from doing business with the Iranian lender — in effect shutting it out of the UK financial sector — because of its alleged links to Tehran’s nuclear energy program. The Treasury then argued that the bank suffered no irrecoverable loss as a result of a diminution of its subsidiaries’ earnings and that it had not acted in a way that was incompatible with the bank’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights as well as common law. The government also contended that the only possessions that the bank could have lost as a result of the order were “unperformed concluded transactions” and “marketable goodwill represented by or referable to any such unperformed concluded transactions”. But Justice Flaux has ruled against the Treasury on all three counts, saying damages ($1.3 billion) should be recoverable for any loss and the bank should have the right to claim for damages as a consequence of the unlawful interference.
