FAC # 848557
William C. Dudley
President
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
33 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10045
JUN 20 2016
Dear Mr. Dudley:
The PS+1 (the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China), with the European Union, reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran on July 14, 2015 to ensure that Iran's nuclear program is and will be exclusively peaceful. January 16, 2016 marked Implementation Day of the JCPOA, the day on which the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran implemented its key nuclear-related measures under the JCPOA. As a result of Iran verifiably meeting its nuclear-related commitments, the United States lifted its nuclear-related secondary sanctions (i.e., those sanctions directed toward non-U.S. persons for specified conduct involving Iran that occurs entirely outside...
1) In the Review of U.S. Treasury Department’s License to Convert Iranian Assets Using the U.S. Financial System” – Majority Report of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the congressional subcommittee reports the following:
Treasury Department documents now show that the U.S. government authorized a U.S. dollar-originated purchase of Iran’s heavy water and relied on the Federal Reserve Bank to effectuate the purchase. On June 20, 2016, OFAC issued a “comfort letter” to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concerning a series of transactions and conversions to facilitate the $8.6 million purchase of 32 metric tons of heavy water “from Iran for import into the United States.” The comfort letter responded to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s plan to originate a transfer to the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve Bank would then “enter into a foreign exchange” transaction...