The UAE Central Bank sent a memo dated Sept. 4 to the country’s 23 national banks and 28 foreign units, asking them to supply it with information by Tuesday on all their financial transfers to Iran for August.

The bank intends “to run this exercise for just a few months,” from August, said the Central Bank memo, adding that the move is meant “to contribute to studies being conducted to better understand the economic impact of the UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.”

The UN Security Council imposed a fourth round of sanctions on June 9 over Iran’s controversial program of uranium enrichment, which many Western states believe may be a covert bid to make a nuclear bomb. However, Tehran denies the charges.

The United States and European Union have since unilaterally imposed even tougher punitive measures, including provisions to penalize Tehran’s trading partners.

Sources in the banking sector confirmed that the UAE Central Bank circular noted that money transfers to Iran have not stopped since July.

The apex body also issued a warning that it would take supervisory measures against any banks which fail to meet the deadline, according to Sharjah-based Arabic daily Al-Khaleej.

A government official last month said the UAE, a US ally with a large expatriate Iranian population in the emirate of Dubai, was discussing how to approach the sanctions.

“There are a lot of legitimate transactions taking place and I think it is extremely important to have that balance right, between our international commitments on the one hand and also between the fact that a lot of the transactions that we do have are legitimate,” Anwar Mohammad Gargash, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs was quoted as saying by Gulf News.

Last month, the UAE Central Bank ordered the freezing of 41 bank accounts because of the sanctions on Iran, according to the Emirates 24/7 website.

Dubai, one of the leading business hubs, had also recently closed down the offices of 40 firms suspected of breaching the curbs, reported the Dubai-based Gulf News daily.

Iran had been a significant trading partner of the UAE. Last year, the volume of trade between the two countries crossed $8.4 billion, according to the UAE Ministry of Trade.

However, an Iranian businessman based in Dubai, a key re-export hub for Iranian goods, said the latest curbs have halved trade with the emirate.

Now UAE businessmen are not allowed to “open a letter of credit to overseas suppliers if the port of discharge is an Iranian port,” he said.

Similarly, ships carrying petroleum to Iran have faced greater scrutiny at ports in the UAE in recent months, according to sources.

“We stopped transfers to Iran in all currencies in July,” said an executive from an international bank.