High-level executives with Bank Melli Iran and France’s Banque Delubac met on Wednesday in Tehran to discuss a potential restoration of relations that were cut off after Iran was slapped with financial sanctions.

Barat Karimi, a board member of Iran’s biggest bank BMI, conferred with Denis Meilhon, chief executive, and Joel-Alexis Bialkiewicz, managing partner at the French bank.

Mohsen Rashidi, director of Iran-France trade promotion at the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran, also attended the meeting, BMI’s official website reported.

“The two countries had a large volume of trade before the sanctions when BMI had active banking correspondent relations with many of France’s major banks,” the BMI board member said.

“In order to facilitate trade between the two countries and offer services to traders and businessmen, we have been doing our best since sanctions were removed to improve this process by establishing correspondent relations.”

Karimi pointed out that Iran is currently engaged with a number of major French companies and many tourists are traveling to and from Iran and France, so development of trade ties would also prove helpful to tourists in addition to traders.

The CEO of Delubac favored the revival and development of banking relations with Iran and said his bank reestablished preliminary ties two years ago when the nuclear deal was implemented and will continue to keep its links alive.

The official pointed out that a number of major French companies opened accounts with his bank at that time to conduct transactions with Iran.

“We have also had negotiations with BMI officials in Paris concerning opening accounts and correspondent relations have now been established with BMI in Paris,” he said.

Leyla Sadr, who heads the Foreign Exchange Guarantees Department of BMI, and Reza Anvari, who leads the bank’s Department for Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism, were senior BMI officials present at the meeting.

Source:

2018, Bank Melli Reviving Ties With French Bank, Saturday, March 17, p.1,<https://financialtribune.com>