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The US Federal Reserve stops financial transfers to 14 Iraqi banks
November 15, 2022
Journal(JNA)
In an economic step that is the first of its kind in Iraq in years,
the US Federal Bank stops financial transfers to 14 Iraqi banks and opens an investigation into the files of these banks, in preparation for their inclusion in the blacklist.
The US Federal Reserve's decision to stop financial transfers with Iraqi banks came as a result of accusing these banks of smuggling money from the currency auction illegally.
An informed source said in an interview to the Journal,
“the US Federal Bank issued its decision to stop financial transfers to 14 Iraqi banks, on charges of smuggling money from the currency auction (affiliated to the central bank), to countries under US sanctions, without revealing the source of the name of these banks. He added that
”the Federal Bank has opened an investigation into the records of these banks, and
this will entail the imposition of greater and broader sanctions,
including the inclusion of these banks in the blacklist and the end of work with them".
The penalty for blacklisting provides for the suspension and punishment of all financial transactions between the US financial system and the listed bank.
These sanctions came less than a month after Mohammed Shiaa al-Sudani received the presidency of the new government and pledged to work to put the Iraqi economy on the right track.
The Iraqi market witnessed, on Tuesday, speculation in the dollar exchange rate, as it recorded today 148,500 Iraqi dinars against 100 US dollars, noting that the official quotation from the Bank of Iraq is 1450 dinars per one US dollar.
The dollar exchange rate has risen to record levels, with a difference of 3,500 dinars from the official real rate from the central bank, and this benefits speculators from the owners of banking companies, who today started buying only dollars and not selling.
The Iraqi economy is suffering from a large economic inflation due to
- political problems,
instability of the financial market,
high rates of corruption and
money smuggling,
which created a kind of distrust among the Iraqi citizen, and that the Journal could get statements from the Central Bank of Iraq on the subject, which witnessed the suspension of dealing in dollars with four of its largest banks The reasons.
Journal newspaper
