OREANDA-NEWS. May 17, 2010. The Federal Reserve Bank and the New York State Banking Department concluded the first scheduled check-up of annual activities of the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), which is functioning in the world leading financial center - New York, the IBA announced, reported the press-centre of IBA.

The inspection was held to check up the relevance of the office's activities to New York St. banking legislation and the Federal banking legislation, as well as existing standard norms documents. Key attention was paid to existence of internal control system, counteracting the legalization of finances and property, acquired through criminal ways and financing terror.

"Final estimation of the activities was positive. A communique addressed to the IBA characterizes positively the representation's work on all directions and voices a wish for further development of its activities in similar way," the statement said.

The U.S. Federal Reserve System Board of Directors provided positive reply to IBA's application on opening a representation in New York July 31, 2008, and was issued a relevant permission on Dec. 8, 2008. It enabled the representation to set up officially the activities since January, 2009.

The IBA representation in New York acts as a mediator between the central office in Baku and the bank's financial partner-institutes in the U.S. Its major tasks include defense of client's interests in the U.S. and forming new clientele base, attracting investments to Azerbaijan and assisting establishing mutually profitable relation between the U.S. and Azerbaijani business circles.

Richard L.Smith, former manager of Citibank with over 10-year experience in the East Europe and Central Europe, heads the office.

Apart from its office in New York, IBA also possesses representations in Europe's huge financial centers, including London, active since 2002, Frankfurt am Main, active since 2005 and Luxembourg, active since 2008, as well as Dubai, one of more developing market of the Islamic-Arab world, active since November, 2008.

Intensive work is being done to open a subsidiary of IBA at the international financial center of Qatar. It will come as the third subsidiary of the IBA apart from IBA-Moscow and IBA-Georgia. The newly adopted development strategy of the IBA for 2010-2015 envisages its entry to new perspective capital markets.