The country’s largest lender State Bank of India has alerted all its offices on the pitfalls of dealing with companies carrying out trade with Russia and Iran which are battling US sanctions.
Large corporate branches handling oil import payments to Iran have been told to inform Indian refiners that the bank will not be able to entertain such transactions from November 4 if the existing sanctioned regime continues. All branches have been directed to refrain from taking new exposure in any form, such as letter of credit and bank guarantee, for any transaction related to Iran with immediate effect, according to a SBI internal communique, dated May 25.
The bank’s branches have to invariably obtain prior clearance from the compliance division before handling transactions related to Russia (and a few other countries) in a special format and conduct higher level of due diligence before taking any credit exposure.
The US this month withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions that were suspended under the 2015 accord.
However, addressing a news conference this week Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said that the country would follow only sanctions by the United Nations, and not unilateral sanctions by a country.
For more details please read at : https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/finance/banking/sbi-alerts-branches-of-iran-russia-pitfalls/articleshow/64393613.cms