U.S. officials also considered blacklisting two of China’s largest lenders—China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China—alongside Bank of Dandong in 2017, but shelved the plan for fear of severely damaging the global financial system, sources told Bloomberg last year.” (ACAMS, “Banks Reassess Exposure to China Amid Rising Tensions: Sources,” 4/1/2019).
In the summer of 2017 reports of banking restrictions for Iranian nationals surfaced when some Iranian expatriates said their accounts with AG Bank had been closed. However, on January 31, 2018, the Chairman of the Iran-China chamber of commerce said the issue was resolved.
“Since May, four major state-owned Chinese banks – the Bank of China (BOC), the China Construction Bank (CCB), the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) – have been declining issuance of letters of credits (LCs) on transactions involving cargoes possibly originating in Iran, they said.” (ICIS, “China’s Iran petchem imports at risk,” 7/7/2017).
“China’s third-largest lender tried to obscure the trail of dollar transactions by Russian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern clients and attempted to silence a compliance officer who raised alarms about it, according to New York’s banking regulator. State-controlled Agricultural Bank of China was ordered to pay a $215 million penalty and install an independent monitor for 18 months to oversee the establishment of compliance controls, New York State’s Department of Financial Services said in a consent order Friday… Some invoices appeared to be counterfeited or falsified, the compliance staff said, including dollar transactions apparently involving an Iranian party under U.S. sanctions.
Some of these transactions were sent through the global interbank-messaging system, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, using coded messages that masked client identities to avoid DFS screening, according to the consent order.” (Bloomberg News, “China’s AGBank Fined $215 Million for Hiding Transactions,” 11/4.2016).