News
Collecting Court Awards from Iran is Nearly Impossible for Plaintiffs, Troublesome for Banks
By Colby Adams
printPending civil complaints and recently unsealed documents in a case against a Luxembourg-based financial institution show the difficulty in collecting a landmark monetary penalty assessed against Iran for sponsoring terror, say analysts. In September 2007, U.S. federal judge Royce Lamberth ordered Iran to pay $2.6 billion to relatives of the 241 victims killed and 26 survivors of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. Despite a bevy of pending civil cases brought against banks and other entities to collect the funds, almost no Iranian-linked assets have been handed over to the nearly 1,000 plaintiffs, including the...
TO READ THE FULL STORY
Related News
The U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday overwhelmingly approved bills that would restrict loans and interbank transfers of credit involving entities that facilitate Iran's petroleum and weapons trade.
A U.S. official's threat last month of economic sanctions against four Chinese banks is likely to be toothless given economic and enforcement hurdles, say sanctions analysts.
Federal prosecutors said Thursday that they were seeking forfeitures from three New York banks as part of the prosecution of two companies allegedly operating under the control of a sanctioned Iranian bank.
Over 100 victims of Israeli terrorist attacks are suing one of China's largest banks for knowingly wiring millions of dollars to two blacklisted terrorist groups, even after Israeli counterterrorism agents commanded the institution to stop.
A group of 90 American, Israeli and Canadian citizens are suing American Express Bank and Lebanese Canadian Bank for $650 million, alleging the institutions provided financial services to blacklisted terror group Hizbollah.
Four Canadians are suing the Montreal branch of Lebanese-Canadian Bank, alleging that the institution knowingly provided financial services to Hizbollah, an organization blacklisted internationally for terrorism.
The U.K. and the European Union will freeze the assets of Iran's largest bank, Bank Melli, over Iran's alleged plans to build a nuclear weapons program, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today during a joint press conference with President George Bush.
The widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl sued the bank, claiming it knowingly maintained accounts for two organizations tied by the U.S. Treasury Department to Pearl's 2002 kidnapping and murder.