RUSSIA NOTIFIED ABOUT BANK SEPAH, STILL NO DECREE

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 001414 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE FOR EUR/RUS, IO/FO, EEB/ESC/TFS STATE FOR ISN/RA, ISN/CPI TREASURY FOR BAKER, ALIKONIS, EDDY NSC FOR KLECHESKI E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/30/2017 TAGS: KNNP IR RS PARM EFIN KTFN SUBJECT: RUSSIA NOTIFIED ABOUT BANK SEPAH, STILL NO DECREE ON UNSCR 1737 REF: A. STATE 38553 ¶B. MOSCOW 1262 ¶C. MOSCOW 1249 Classified By: ECON M/C Pam Quanrud, Reasons 1.4 (b/d). ¶1. (C) Econoff delivered a copy of Treasury Deputy Secretary Robert M. Kimmitt's statement (provided in Reftel A) on UNSCR 1747's designation of Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International to Vladimir Prokhorov, Senior Legal Counsel for the MFA's Department of New Threast and Challenges. Delivery of the Deputy Treasury Secretary's statement allowed for a follow-up meeting with the MFA to discussions that Treasury Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes SIPDIS Patrick O'Brien had with Russian officials during his March 12-13 visit to Moscow. ¶2. (C) During that visit, O'Brien relayed the USG's concerns about Bank Sepah, as well as Bank Saderat, to the Russia's Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Safonov (Reftel B),Deputy Central Bank Chairman Viktor Melnikov, and Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Russia's FIU) Director Viktor Zubkov (Reftel C). O'Brien also urged the presidents of the Association of Russian Banks and the Russian Association of Regional Banks to alert their members to requests for transactions from these banks. ¶3. (C) Prokhorov said that the interagency effort to draft a Presidential Decree that would allow for implementation of the previous resolution on Iran, UNSCR 1737, remained a work in progress. He offered no timeframe for implementation of UNSCR 1747. RUSSELL