NITC Claims EU Sanctions Annulled

European Union sanctions against Iran’s largest oil tanker company NITC have been lifted after there was no appeal by the EU to the General Court’s ruling against the EU’s 2012 blacklisting designation of the company, NITC said.

An EU official told Reuters that the time for appeal had expired, but that they were still working on keeping the company on the black list.

The sanctions were imposed in 2012 over Iran’s nuclear programme, and banned any trade between NITC and the EU, including insurance and banking.

NITC, previously sanctioned both by the EU and the United States, contested the blacklist designation by arguing that the company is privately owned by Iranian pension funds, and affiliated neither with the Iranian Government, nor with the Revolutionary Guards.

The EU General Court in its ruling on the appeal stated that there is no evidence supporting NITC’s alleged ties to the Government of Iran, allowing a two-month appeal period which has now expired.

“We are relieved to see the lifting of these sanctions. We have always enjoyed good business relationships with our EU partners and look forward to resuming those now this difficult period has come to an end,” NITC managing director Ali Akbar Safaei said.

The EU recently lifted the sanctions on another Iranian trading company, Shahid Rajaee Port’s operator Tidewater Middle East Company, enabling the port to resume its international container services.