Iranian assets that had been frozen in South Korea have been transferred to Switzerland’s central bank last week for exchange and transfer to Qatar, Yonhap reported on August 21.

The Swiss National Bank plans to exchange its $6bn holdings in won for US dollars and euros in the currency market, converting about KRW300bn ($223.85mn) daily for the next five weeks.

An official at South Korea’s finance ministry declined to confirm the report, citing the legal and diplomatic sensitivity of the matter, Reuters wrote.

Iran and the US recently reached an agreement in which five US citizens detained in Iran would be released while Iranian assets in South Korea would be unfrozen and sent to an account in Qatar that Iran could access.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said last week that the released assets would be used to enhance domestic production.

The process of releasing US prisoners held in Iran will take up to two months, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said on Monday during a press conference.

"A specific time frame has been announced by relevant authorities, and it will take a maximum of two months for this process to take place," Kanaani said.

Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Mohammad Reza Farzin recently said Iran has funds worth nearly $7bn deposited in South Korean banks over the past years, with no interest paid, explaining that the funds shrunk by close to $1bn in value due to the depreciation of the won against the dollar.

He added that those funds would be used for purchasing non-sanctioned goods through banking payment systems, noting that the frozen assets in several other countries would also be released soon.

On August 13, CBI public relations spokesman Mostafa Ghamari Vafa said that after the release of fund in South Korea to Qatar, several other countries would also release funds back to Iran.  

On August 11, Mohammad Jamshidi, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's deputy chief of staff for political affairs, tweeted that the US prisoners in Iran will leave simultaneously with the release of illegally held Iranians in the US and the full transfer of frozen Iranian assets in South Korea.

As part of the prisoner swap and funds transfer agreement, which has taken more than two years of back-channel talks via regional intermediaries, five US nationals have been released from prison in Iran and have been transferred to either house arrest or a local hotel suite.