Carrie Lam admits US sanctions block her credit card use

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said she is having trouble using her credit cards after the U.S. imposed sanctions targeting Chinese officials and their allies in the city.

“As for myself, of course it will have a little bit of inconvenience here and there, because we have to use some financial services and we don’t know whether that will relate back to an agency that has some American business -- and the use of credit cards is sort of hampered,” Lam said in an interview with Chinese state broadcaster CGTN posted late Monday. “But those are really meaningless as far as I’m concerned.”

Lam was one of 11 officials sanctioned earlier this month by President Donald Trump for their roles in curtailing political freedoms in Hong Kong, amid the implementation of new national security legislation imposed on the city by China in June, Bloomberg reports.

“The most important thing is we feel honorable that we are, at this historic moment, being trusted by the central people’s government to enforce a piece of national law to safeguard national security,” Lam said. “The more that this attracts the critics of China to attack us, the more effective this piece of legislation is to achieve its intended objective.“

Spokespeople for Visa and Mastercard didn’t immediately reply to messages requesting comment outside of business hours.

China’s largest state-run banks operating in Hong Kong are taking tentative steps to comply with U.S. sanctions imposed on officials in the city, Bloomberg reported last week, as they seek to safeguard their access to crucial dollar funding and overseas networks.

Major lenders with operations in the U.S. including Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., and China Merchants Bank Co. have turned cautious on opening new accounts for the 11 sanctioned officials, people familiar said.