In a televised speech on Thursday night, he added, "We are doing our best to buy medicine and medical equipment by bypassing the oppressive US sanctions, and $2.7 billion have so far been allocated for the purchase of medical equipment and medicine."
"Today, in cooperation with the Health Ministry, we managed to transfer the funds needed to import 16.8 million doses of coronavirus vaccine," he added.
"After 10 days of efforts, we finally sent some 180 million euros to a bank in Switzerland through an American and Korean bank," Hemmati said.
"We were able to send this remittance through three banks in Turkey, Europe and a branch of an Iranian bank with the permission of OFAC, as the Americans have always caused a lot of problems for remittances and we were careful that the Americans do not encroach on our financial resources this time either," he said.
Referring to Health Ministry'd talks with the Chinese to purchase vaccine, he said that whenever an agreement was reached with China, the central bank would provide the money needed to buy the vaccine from them.
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