All Iranian Assets Freed Post Sanctions

Apart from a handful of countries with problems unrelated to previous nuclear sanctions, all Iran’s frozen assets have been freed, the government spokesman said.

“What was agreed upon to remove the blockade of Iranian assets has been delivered,” IRNA quoted Mohammad Baqer Nobakht as saying in response to a question about whether Iran’s nuclear accord and the lifting of western sanctions resulted in a complete unfreezing of Iranian funds.

“In the case of some countries, namely India, there are no excuses concerning the sanctions and they might be experiencing other delays regarding the matter [their oil debts],” he added.

Nobakht, who is also the head of Planning and Budget Organization, assured that the aforementioned inconveniences notwithstanding, “the blocked assets have been freed”. 

India owed $6.4 billion to Iran for crude oil imports. In late May 2016, Indian refiners cleared a part of their debts in euro with state refiner Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd., paying $500 million and Indian Oil Corporation settling $250 million through the Union Bank of India.

The Indian ambassador to Iran said on Wednesday there are no oil debts to be settled between the two countries.

“India does not owe anything to Iran and has paid its oil debts in full,” Saurabh Kumar said in a talk with ILNA.

“The important thing is that the volume of imported Iranian goods to India is more than Indian exports to Iran, therefore the trade balance is in favor of Iran and whatever the difference in dealings, India has paid it in full,” he added.

The Central Bank of Iran published a report in mid-January detailing the achievements of the country’s nuclear accord in the banking and monetary sectors, coinciding with the first anniversary of the accord’s implementation.

“After the deal was implemented, more than $9.9 billion of the central bank’s frozen oil money were released and repatriated from the UAE, Britain, India, Greece, Italy and Norway,” said the report.

The bank added that after the adoption of the interim agreement, $12 billion of its blocked assets were freed from Japan, South Korea and India in the form of installments.

As part of the Geneva interim agreement, which was signed in November 2013 and its two subsequent extensions, a total of $11.2 billion of Iranian assets were freed and the amount reached $30 billion since the agreement’s implementation.

During the implementation of the nuclear deal, a further $1.4 billion and after its implementation, “at least $30 billion” were released.

CBI Governor Valiollah Seif has denied the presence of any obstacles for bringing the freed money to Iran, saying that the country prefers to keep those assets abroad.