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Trump aims sanctions at Iran ... Hong Kong bank customers get hit

Banking for companies that do business with Iran is about to get even more complicated – as some in Hong Kong and mainland China are already finding out

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As Washington clashes with Tehran, bank customers in Hong Kong and mainland China are finding themselves caught in the crossfire. Photo: AFP
Chandran Nair, the founder of the Global Institute for Tomorrow, was seeking answers when four Standard Chartered senior bank officers strode into his Hong Kong office in Taikoo Shing.
Nair, from Malaysia, whose think tank deals mainly in executive education, wanted to know why his company account was frozen, and then, seemingly out of the blue, the bank started asking questions about his company’s dealings with Iran.

“The bank wanted to know if we are some criminal organisation,” Nair said. “Are we doing something with Iran?”

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The bank was asking questions about a trip in September 2015, when Nair brought executives from a dozen multinational companies to Iran’s Isfahan Province as part of a two-week leadership programme. The programmes are held six times a year in different countries, at a cost of US$18,000 per student.

Standard Chartered Bank was fined US$667 million in 2012 for hiding thousands of Iran-related transactions. Photo: AFP
Standard Chartered Bank was fined US$667 million in 2012 for hiding thousands of Iran-related transactions. Photo: AFP

In Iran, participants developed business models to help Iranian farmers prolong the shelf life of apples, make jams or even perfumes from the fruit and identify markets for them.

Three years later, Standard Chartered began demanding “intimate details” about the trip: the airline Nair and his staff flew with, hotels they stayed in, places they visited, who their clients and Iranian contacts were, whether they paid in cash.

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