Reimbursement for Fereshtegan Customers

Customers of the now-dissolved Fereshtegan Credit Institution will be gradually reimbursed by Caspian Credit Institution, the Central Bank of Iran announced. Depositors with a maximum 100 million rials ($2,653) in their bank accounts would be prioritized by Caspian, which is being urged to attend to other clients as well in coordination with CBI and the judiciary. Caspian is a certified credit institution formed through the merger of several credit institutions and cooperatives based in Khorasan Razavi Province, including Fereshtegan, Ferdowsi, Badr Toos and Al-Zahra. The merger came as part of CBI’s efforts to organize uncertified credit institutions, some of which have gone bust. Unlicensed institutions had made it hard for CBI to balance interest rates within the legal network because deposit rates offered by these institutions were always higher and they had created grounds for money laundering. Eventually, many of them became bankrupt due to inefficient management and heavy investment in real-estate projects.