For years, NIAC has tracked reports of Iranians and Iranian Americans who have faced discrimination by U.S. banks solely on the basis of their national heritage and has simultaneously worked to protect and push back against such discrimination. Concerningly, Bank of America itself revealed in a recent lawsuit that it restricted the accounts of more than 15,000 individuals of Iranian heritage. And that’s just one bank.
Demanding fair banking access for our community and an end to “de-banking” is a priority for our organization, and we have used stories from our community to engage both banks and policymakers to stop this from happening.
Now, the Senate Banking Committee could soon act on this issue. On February 5, 2025, the Senate Committee on Banking held a hearing investigating de-banking on multiple stakeholders. In tandem with this recent hearing, the committee Chairman – Senator Tim Scott – has created a whistleblower resource where you can share your story. NIAC urges the Iranian-American community to share their stories on de-banking with the committee, which may inform future legislation and actions from the committee.
Chairman Scott stated that “As Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, I’m committed to ensuring Americans who have been de-banked have their voices heard, and to prevent chokepoint activities from happening in the future. If you have been de-banked, I encourage you to reach out to my staff through our confidential whistleblower resource. Working together, we can ensure bad actors who have exploited their power are held accountable.”
The stories you share, at your own discretion, can fuel potential legislation. And with assurance from the committee itself that your story can be submitted anonymously with no detailed personal, trackable information required, we strongly encourage those of you who are comfortable sharing your experience to do so via this new resource.
As laid out by the committee – to share such information with Chairman Scott’s staff, please email [email protected] or call 202-224-4287. The committee asks for the precise details of your allegation as well as a phone number or email address for them to reach you, though the latter task is not required in order to submit if you feel uncomfortable sharing such information.
If you choose to submit your story to the committee via email, please CC [email protected], which will help to better reinforce to the committee the magnitude of this issue within our larger community and our collective campaign to address it. If you choose to make a call to the committee, please note your membership with NIAC, which will also help to achieve that same objective.
For those who might not know how to draft a story for submission to the Senate Committee on Banking, we have included a sample template below:
“To whom it may concern,
My name is _____________, I am a resident of __________, a member of the National Iranian American Council, and I have been discriminated against by a U.S. bank solely on the basis of my Iranian heritage.
*Insert the details of your experience with banking discrimination*
I strongly urge the committee to take further steps, beyond its recent hearing investigating debanking, to examine specifically how banks engage in an overenforcement of U.S. sanctions when choosing to serve – or not serve – customers of Iranian descent. Furthermore, I also urge the committee to investigate how AML/CFT guidelines can be effectively updated and how underlying sanctions regulations as a whole contribute to the impact on Iranians/Iranian Americans like myself.
Thank you for your consideration.”
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to our team directly ([email protected]/[email protected]) if you would like to discuss your experience and this resource further.
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