The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ has frozen accounts of the government and Central Bank of Iran, as demanded by the New York District Court, ITAR-TASS reports.
The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ realizes up to 80% of Japanese-Iranian operations. Japanese companies may stop oil trading with Iran.
The New York court ordered the bank to freeze up to $2.6 billion of Iranian accounts in February. It is part of the case into the blowing up of US marines in Beirut in 1983, in which Iranian intelligence services were supposedly involved.
Japan was the third largest purchaser of Iranian oil in 2011 after the EU and China. Purchases have halved since new tensions around the Iranian nuclear program in 2003. Japanese mports of Iranian oil fell by 11.7% in 2011.
