On Tuesday, Santander, a leading bank based in Spain, firmly stated that it had found no violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran after conducting a comprehensive review. This statement came in response to a report by the Financial Times (FT) suggesting that Iran had utilised accounts at Santander and Lloyds in the UK for clandestinely transferring funds globally as part of a scheme to circumvent sanctions, reportedly supported by Iran’s intelligence services.
Santander Says It Did Not Violate US Sanctions on Iran
An internal communication, initially disclosed by Bloomberg News and subsequently verified by Reuters, revealed that Santander’s global head of communications announced the bank had undertaken an extensive examination of connections to entities and individuals mentioned in the FT report. The investigation concluded that there were no sanctions breaches within any segment of Santander’s international operations.
The FT had earlier claimed that Santander UK and Lloyds provided banking services to UK-based shell companies allegedly controlled by a sanctioned Iranian petrochemical company in London. Following their inquiries, both banks stated last week that they found no evidence of sanction violations on their part.
The report highlighted that the Iranian government-run Petrochemical Commercial Company (PCC) and its UK branch, PCC UK, were implicated in a network accused by the United States of generating substantial funds for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and collaborating with Russian intelligence. According to the FT, PCC and PCC UK have been under U.S. sanctions since November 2018.
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One of the purported shell companies, Pisco UK, registered at a residential property in Surrey, operated a business account with Santander UK. Santander clarified in its Tuesday memo that this account was terminated in 2022 for reasons not related to these claims.
The bank emphasised that neither the account’s beneficiary nor the business’s purported owners were subject to sanctions while the account was active, nor are they currently. Additionally, Santander noted that the transaction volumes through the account during its operation were “negligible.”
