TEHRAN – The governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has said all the country’s frozen assets in South Korea have been released, Mehr News Agency reported.

"Through technical follow-up and successful diplomacy, all Iran's seized foreign currency resources in South Korea were freed and the expenses of its converting from won to euro were also accepted by the third country," Mohammadreza Farzin wrote in a post on his social media on Saturday.

According to Farzin, the mentioned assets will be soon transferred into accounts of Iranian banks in Qatar.

"Unfortunately, nearly seven billion dollars from our country's foreign currency resources were transferred to South Korean banks in won (South Korea's local currency) over the past years, and no interest was paid to it. Even during all these years, due to the depreciation of the won against the dollar, nearly $1 billion of it faced a decrease in exchange value," he stated.

"Soon, all these sources will be deposited into the accounts of six Iranian banks in Qatar and will be used as bank payments for purchasing non-sanctioned goods. The rest of these resources, in case of a deposit, will receive bank interest," Farzin further noted.

The financial dispute between Iran and South Korea dates back to 2018, when the United States unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and started slapping economic sanctions on Iran. Before 2018, South Korea had been the third-largest buyer of Iranian oil and the top customer of Iranian condensates. The oil trade between Tehran and Seoul resulted in the accumulation of some seven billion dollars in Iranian oil revenues in South Korean banks.

With tensions between Tehran and Washington exacerbating, Seoul moved to block the Iranian funds for fear of falling afoul of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

EF/MA