Iran’s central bank announced on Saturday that it will fight a lawsuit filed in a U.S. court by creditors seeking to seize $1.7 billion held by Deutsche Börse’s Clearstream unit.
“After repeated legal defeats in Luxembourg, the U.S. plaintiffs are seeking legal action in U.S. courts against Clearstream. Serious legal action is also underway to counter these measures,” said Amir Hossein Tayyebi Fard, a deputy governor of the Iranian central bank, reported Reuters.
He added that the assets sought had a value of $1.7 billion.
The German stock exchange operator Deutsche Böerse, which denies any wrongdoing, said creditors filed the lawsuit in a New York court seeking Clearstream assets allegedly owned by Iran’s central bank.
The U.S. authorities have been looking into Clearstream for years for suspected violations of U.S. money laundering laws and sanctions against Iran, noted the report. A Luxembourg court refused to enforce a U.S. ruling in 2019 seeking Iranian assets in Clearstream to help families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
This came after a U.S. court found evidence in 2012 that Iran aided the Al-Qaeda terrorist group.