Emigrant Bank to pay $32K in Iran sanctions case

New York-based Emigrant Bank agreed to pay nearly $32,000 as part of a settlement with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) addressing apparent sanctions violations regarding an account it maintained for a pair of Iranian residents.

The alleged lapses were deemed non-egregious by OFAC, and Emigrant received a discounted penalty for its voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remedial actions undertaken, the agency said in an enforcement release Thursday.

In 1995, Emigrant opened a certificate of deposit (CD) account for the Iranian residents. The account was renewed every five years, a process that entailed the bank gathering and producing documentation that demonstrated its knowledge of the account’s Iranian roots.