MOSCOW, April 27 (Itar-Tass) —— Sanctions against the Iranian banking system breach the International Monetary Fund Charter, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Rossiya 24 on Friday.
“I think that the banking system situation breaches the IMF Charter, which demands that all of IMF member states ensure uninterrupted bank services to trade and economic contacts,” he said.
“Sanctions against Iran exceeding the UN Security Council resolutions of 2010 and targeting at legal entities or individuals are actually aimed to ‘smother’ the national economy. We did not do that and neither did China. The UN Security Council adopted a highly refined resolution, which confirmed the need for settling the Iranian nuclear problem exclusively at negotiations,” he said.
“However, our Western partners – the United States, the EU, Australia, Japan and some others – started endorsing unilateral sanctions after that. The EU stops buying Iranian crude although many EU member countries are dependent on it. One may say there will be compensation for the deficit but even their refineries were built to process crude from Iran, not from somewhere else, and their readjustment would require large investments, which Europe can hardly afford now,” he said.