Marathon Pundit: Giannoulias' Iranian ties

Here's a story from Friday I missed because of the run-up to last night's ObamaCare vote. The Giannoulias family, apparently not content with lending money to mobsters and Tony Rezko from their family-owned Broadway Bank, through another company made a deal with a French bank with another questionable customer--the Central Bank of Iran.

From the Weekly Standard:

Although several legislative efforts in Congress are currently in the works to apply more sanctions to Iran, and although Giannoulias has called Iran "the greatest single threat to peace in the Middle East," when it comes to his personal finances, however, Giannoulias does not apply the same standards.

Giannoulias owns stock in his family's Giannoulias Enterprises, a limited partnership that owns several properties in Chicago. Giannoulias's brother, Demetris, serves as the president.

In April 2007, Giannoulias Enterprises refinanced its real estate portfolio, taking out a $21.5 million, 10-year loan on six properties – four of them being the locations of the family's Broadway Bank. With all the banks in the world to choose from, Giannoulias Enterprises selected the French investment bank Natixis – an institution with a long and public history of doing business in Iran.

In 2007, the French bank held $117 million in deposits from the Central Bank of Iran. Later that year, the bank's Iranian deposits were frozen when U.S. courts ordered the Iranian Government to pay $87.5 million to American victims of Iranian-backed terrorism.