ARMENIA BANS OPERATION OF WESTERN UNION ON ITS TERRITORY

Today.Az
ics/47174.html
Aug 25 2008
Azerbaijan

The Board of the Central Bank (CB) of Armenia decided today to
forbid all the banks on the territory of Armenia to participate in
the international Western Union money transfer system.

As Mediamax was told in CB press service, the banks were ordered to
annul the cooperation agreements with Western Union in an envisaged
order.

The CB press service informed that this decision was made to reduce the
banking risks as "there are cases of unfounded violation of agreement
provisions between Western Union and several banks acting on the
territory of Armenia. Thus, in branches of several banks the money
transfer system stopped service which can harm the usual activity of
the banks, their financial status, lead to an unexpected situation
in the sphere of money transfers, as well as influence the economic,
financial and real sectors of the country."

Mediamax recalls that earlier Azerbaijan demanded that Western
Union, Moneygram and some other systems stopped their activity in the
"Nagorno-Karabakh Republic" (NKR) threatening to ban the activity of
the systems in Azerbaijan. As a result of this, several money transfer
systems stopped their activity in "NKR".