Qatar’s central bank has requested US regulators to investigate an Emirati bank that Doha accuses of waging ‘financial warfare’ against it.

Qatar claims NBAD Americas, the US subsidiary of First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), is engaging in ‘bogus’ foreign exchange deals intended to undermine the Qatari riyal and harm its economy, reported Al Jazeera.

FAB is the largest bank in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and majority state-owned.

Qatar Central Bank’s law firm has written a letter to the US Treasury asking it to investigate NBAD Americas.

In a second letter, the lawyers — Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison — asked the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to investigate possible manipulation of Qatar’s currency, the Riyal, reported Reuters, in an exclusive report.

“We believe NBAD has participated in an extraordinary and unlawful scheme to wage financial warfare against Qatar, including through the manipulation of Qatari currency and securities markets,” the law firm stated in a letter to the US Treasury dated February 26.

“These actions should be halted immediately, and we ask that you investigate whether NBAD has directly or indirectly supported the manipulation of Qatar’s markets, including through NBAD America’s dollar-clearing or correspondent banking services in the United States,” the letter said.

FAB, which was created from the merger of First Gulf Bank and National Bank of Abu Dhabi last year, did not respond to questions about details of the allegations.

“As the UAE’s largest bank and one of the world's largest and safest financial institutions, FAB works closely with all of its regulators in the markets in which it operates, to sustain and uphold the high standards of governance and regulatory compliance across the group,” it said in a statement.

The UAE government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Qatari government spokesman confirmed the letters had been sent to US regulators but declined to comment on their content, reported Gulf Times.

The Qatar Central Bank had said in December it had launched an investigation into possible manipulation of its markets by the countries that had imposed the economic blockade.

It previously accused unnamed banks of trying to manipulate the riyal by trading it between themselves offshore at artificially weak levels — to create an illusion Qatar's economy was crumbling.