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Iran says begins transferring foreign holdings | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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TEHRAN,(Reuters) – Iran, which could face U.N. economic sanctions over its atomic programme, has started to transfer assets held in foreign accounts, the central bank governor was quoted as saying on Friday.

“We transfer foreign reserves to wherever we see as expedient. On this issue, we have started transferring. We are doing that,” Ebrahim Sheibani told the ISNA students’ news agency when asked about the need to move Iran’s holdings.

ISNA specifically asked whether the money was being moved to Asian accounts but Sheibani’s answer sidestepped whether the assets would head east.

Sheibani told reporters earlier this week that Iran stood ready to repatriate the money it held abroad should this prove necessary.

Iran has bitter memories of its U.S. assets being frozen shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iran is the fourth biggest oil exporter in the world and the second largest in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Eighty percent of its export earnings come from oil, the price of which has soared over the past two years.

Economists estimate Iran will have earned more than $40 billion in oil revenues by the end of the year to March 2006. Of this, $16 billion goes straight to budgeted government spending.

The rest goes to the Central Bank of Iran which keeps an unknown amount of holdings in foreign accounts.

The Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO), the powerful trade and financing arm of the National Iranian Oil Company, is based in Switzerland.