Mizzima
The Sonali Bank of Bangladesh has frozen accounts of two banks of Myanmar, following the reminder of US embassy in Dhaka that Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank and the Myanmar Investment and Commercial Bank were under US sanctions, according to a report of the Daily Star.
Md Afzal Karim, managing director and CEO of Sonali Bank, said, “Those banks of Myanmar have $1,200,000 in our bank but they cannot withdraw the funds because we froze the accounts after US sanctions.”
Sonali Bank has already sought opinion from its central bank about the accounts of these two banks, said an official of this bank on condition of anonymity, adding that further steps would be taken depending on the decision of the central bank.
The US government-imposed sanctions on MFTB, MICB and Myanmar’s defence ministry in June, followed by the European Union’s seventh round of sanctions on Myanmar on 20 July.
According to the report of BenarNews, Sonali Bank took this action due to the reminder from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, an agency under the US Treasury Department that enforces sanctions.
He also said that the Myanmar junta had requested Bangladesh to make the accounts available for transactions although it will not be possible to open until the sanction is lifted.
Trade volume between Myanmar and Bangladesh is very small, with around $128.5 million from Myanmar to Bangladesh and $3.9 million from Bangladesh to Myanmar in the 2022 fiscal year.
Syed Mahbubur Rahman, managing director of Dhaka-based private commercial Mutual Trust Bank, told BenarNew that since Bangladesh does not have a large amount of business with Myanmar, there will not be a significant bottleneck due to this reason, and there is no reason to worry about it.
Singapore’s United Overseas Bank (UOB), the biggest foreign bank in Myanmar, warned local banks in the first week of this month that it will cut ties with them for all payments to and from Myanmar accounts on 1 September as a move to restrict the military regime’s access to the global financial system.
