WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Iran's oldest bank has been barred from conducting business in the United States by the U.S. Treasury Department over alleged links to North Korea.
Administration officials claim Bank Sepah, Iran's fifth-largest state-controlled bank, has handled millions of dollars of transactions for aerospace industries, passing money from Tehran to North Korea, from which Iran buys missile components, The Washington Post reported.
"The only business Sepah could do before today in the United States was U-turn transactions," Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department's undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence told the Post. "They would send it from a European office through a New York bank and then back to Iran. That's the way they would 'dollarize' transactions, but they won't be able to do that anymore."
Last year, the United States took similar action against Bank Saderat, another of Iran's major banks, citing what it said was the bank's involvement in financing terrorism, The New York Times reported.
No European or Gulf allies have followed suit in blocking the banks' fund movements, the Post said.
On Dec. 23, the U.N. Security Council authorized sanctions against Iran for refusing to curb its uranium enrichment program.
