This attitude angers us, because we’re a Belarusian bank, operating fully within the jurisdiction of the Republic of Belarus to the standards required by our laws,” Andrei Veretelnikov, chairman of Trade Capital Bank’s board, said.
“There will be difficulties with our relations with European and American banks, but the work of the bank will go on,” he added.
The U.S. Treasury Department on Jan. 23 took steps to cut off Bank Tejarat from the international financial system for providing financial services to Iran’s lenders and companies.
European Union foreign ministers on Jan. 23 also agreed to freeze the assets of Bank Tejarat’s European branch in Paris.
Belarus yesterday called the sanctions against Iran “counterproductive”.
“Methods of economic pressure and coercion are totally unacceptable,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“The economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran have nothing to do with nuclear non-proliferation, and will only cause harm to the country’s economy and ordinary people,” the statement added.
Trade Capital Bank is Belarus’s 12th-largest lender with about 1.9 trillion Belarusian rubles ($224 million) in assets as of Oct. 1, according to the central bank’s records. The lender had the third-biggest profit growth of Belarus’s banks last year, the central bank data shows, after net income rose eightfold to 21.6 billion rubles in the third quarter from 2.6 billion rubles a year earlier. The bank has branches in Tehran and Kiev as well as Minsk, according to its website.