Brussels, 04/02/2013 (Agence Europe) - In a ruling returned on 29 January (case T-496/10), the General Court of the EU (GCEU) lifted the sanctions - including the freezing of assets - decided on by the Council in July 2010 against the Iranian bank Mellat on the grounds of the financial support it is believed to have provided to develop nuclear and ballistic missile programmes in Iran. The Court took the view that the Council and the Commission were not able clearly to prove the links between the bank and the Iranian state, or its involvement in the development of the Iranian nuclear programme. As a result, Mellat is to be removed from the list of persons and entities involved in the programmes in question (Appendix II to decision 2010/413 and the list in Appendix V to Regulation no. 423/2007) and it will be able to resume its activities in Europe.
In its ruling, the General Court takes the view that the Council failed to examine the relevance and foundation of the information and evidence about the bank which were submitted to it (for example, counter to what the Council states in its decision, Mellat is not a state bank). It observes that the Council violated Mellat's right of defence and right to effective legal protection, by failing to notify it in time of the proposed adoption of restrictive measures against it. It also considers that the reasons put forward by the Council regarding Mellat's involvement in the Iranian nuclear programme are unclear: the involvement of FEE, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mellat, appears to be based only on the unproven involvement of the bank itself; the Council submitted no evidence that Mellat provides the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation, which is involved in the Iranian programme, with banking services. As to the provision of accounting services to Novin Energy Company, itself the subject of UN Security Council and European Council sanctions, Mellat was unaware of Novin's involvement in nuclear proliferation and apparently scaled down and then totally ceased its relations with Novin once restrictive measures had been adopted against the latter. (FG/transl.fl)