The Times: British Bank Facilitated Trades For Sanctioned Iranian Companies

On Monday evening, security forces raided the offices of Farda-ye Eghtesad, an economic website, and detained 30 journalists, including senior editors, holding them incommunicado inside the building overnight. They also confiscated all office computers and electronic devices including mobile phones and interrogated the staff. Additionally, the arrest of another economic journalist, Mehdi Afsharnik, was announced, apparently connected to the raid on Farda-ye Eghtesad.

The website, launched in August 2023, is owned by a subsidiary of Kian Capital, a private investment firm. The newspaper’s offices along with the company’s headquarters and its subsidiaries, were also raided, all located in the same building.

Journalists and observers in Tehran do not say what kind of links exist between the website and Kian capital on the one hand and the issue of circumventing sanctions on the other. It is assumed that the website at least was somehow involved in revealing the Iranian government’s illicit activities.

Kian Capital’s ties with businessman turned political activist Majid Zamani, who founded Kian Group, are noteworthy. Zamani, who now resides in Britain after leaving Iran during last year’s anti-government protests, founded a political group named Government for Iran, advocating for political dialogue and a transition from the Islamic Republic.The group has explained its principles and goals in a document entitled “Roadmap to a Dream” on the English page of its website.

The judiciary’s official news agency, Mizan, released a statement on Tuesday, asserting that the raid and journalist's arrest were not linked to journalistic activities but were under investigation by a security agency. While some detainees have been released, senior editor Ali Mirzakhani and journalist Behzad Bahmannejad have reportedly been taken to another location by security forces.

An economic expert in Tehran, speaking anonymously to Iran International, suggested that the security operations may be in response to a Financial Times report on an Iranian company evading sanctions and the Iranian Navy's seizure of an oil tanker linked to the US in January. The affiliation of Farda-ye Eghtesad with Kian Capital and its founder, Majid Zamani, is considered significant in this context, but no one offers a concrete explanation.

Zamani, an active member of the reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s campaign, was arrested in 2009 for several months during the Green Movement.

Speaking to the reformist Ensaf News Wednesday, the London-based Zamani said that security forces had raided Mabna, a subsidiary of Kian Capital last week, and held all the staff for 24 hours and interrogated them.

According to Zamani, the investigation was related to a video file about sanctions that had been uploaded from one of IP addresses of Mabna on Instagram. He claimed that no evidence had been found during the raid.

Zamani also spoke about more raids on his former companies this week. “They entered the central building of the Kian Group, which is at another location and started inspecting all the [subsidiary] companies for the same reason,” he said and added that the employees had been questioned about having contacts with him.

“[The offices of] Farda-ye Eghtesad are in the same building where other Kian Group companies are. Consequently, [the newspaper office and staff] were searched and interrogated, too,” he told Ensaf News.

Zamani also said he has no knowledge of the video about sanctions that security forces have been questioning the company staff and journalists about.

Mohsen Chaman-Ara, speaking to Fars News Agency, claimed that “commercial transactions between Iraq and Iran continue unaffected.” Earlier an Iraqi news website published the copy of a letter sent by a deputy director of Iraq's central bank notifying the Iranian bank of the decision to revoke its license.

Amid the backdrop of extensive US attacks on positions linked to the Islamic Republic in the region, the US Treasury Department has launched a fresh round of pressures on Iraqi banks, ostensibly aiming to block Iran's access to US dollars via Iraq.

The action was implemented to combat fraud, money laundering, and other illicit uses of the US currency shortly after a visit by a high-ranking US Treasury official. The measures align with US regulations aimed at preventing the unlawful funneling of dollars to Iran and exerting pressure on Tehran in conjunction with US sanctions related to its nuclear program and other conflicts.

As an intermediary between the United States and Iran, Iraq, which holds over $100 billion in reserves in US banks, relies heavily on Washington's cooperation to ensure access to its oil revenues kept in US banks.

Referring to a document from the Iraqi central bank authenticated by a bank official, Reuters identified the banned institutions as Ahsur International Bank for Investment, Investment Bank of Iraq, Union Bank of Iraq, Kurdistan International Islamic Bank for Investment and Development, Al Huda Bank, Al Janoob Islamic Bank for Investment and Finance, Arabia Islamic Bank, and Hammurabi Commercial Bank.

Documents reviewed by the Financial Times reveal that British front companies, covertly owned by a sanctioned Iranian petrochemicals firm located near Buckingham Palace, held accounts with the banks, Santander and Lloyd’s.

The state-controlled Petrochemical Commercial Company (PCC), a central figure in the scheme, is accused by the US of raising substantial sums for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and collaborating with Russian intelligence to fund Iranian proxy militias. Both PCC and its UK subsidiary, PCC UK, have been subject to US sanctions since November 2018.

Recent disclosures about the sanctions-evasion operation in the heart of London, emerge following the Royal Air Force's participation in US airstrikes against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Additionally, both the UK and US have imposed sanctions on what they describe as a "transnational assassinations network" overseen by Iranian intelligence, targeting activists and dissidents, including British residents.

Financial documents scrutinized by the Financial Times indicate that PCC, following its sanctioning by the US, utilized UK-based entities to receive funds from Iranian fronts in China, concealing their true ownership through trustee agreements and nominee directors.

European banks found complicit in breaching US sanctions on Iran have faced significant penalties, with Standard Chartered and UniCredit paying over $1 billion each in fines in 2019.

The Treasury also said on Friday that it had imposed sanctions on six officials of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp's Cyber Electronic Command for malicious cyber activities against critical infrastructure in the United States and elsewhere.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the key procurement network of suppliers of materials and sensitive technology for Iran’s ballistic missile and drone programs, including the Shahed-series UAV produced by Iran’s Shahed Aviation Industries Research Center (SAIRC).

On Friday, OFAC designated four entities that have functioned as covert procurement intermediaries for Hamed Dehghan and Pishtazan Kavosh Gostar Boshra (PKGB), both OFAC-designated individuals actively supporting various Iranian military organizations, including the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).

In addition, OFAC also designated another Hong Kong-based front company involved in selling hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Iranian commodities for the benefit of the IRGC's extraterritorial Qods Force (IRGC-QF).

“Iran’s continued proliferation of its advanced conventional weapons, including the UAVs and missiles that target US soldiers, remains a critical threat to the stability of the region,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson.

“The deliberate targeting of critical infrastructure by Iranian cyber actors is an unconscionable and dangerous act,” Nelson added.

In a letter to President Biden Thursday, 18 Senators from both parties demand maximum efforts to “prevent illicit trade in Iranian oil,” which provides the regime with funds necessary to support its proxies.

“In the wake of the October 7 terror attacks and subsequent attacks by Iran-backed proxies on U.S. forces in the Middle East, we urge you to work harder to stop Iran’s funneling of lucrative oil exports to finance terror,” the Senators told President Joe Biden.

The letter comes right after a similar initiative by 62 House members, who stressed that ongoing attacks on US troops in the Middle East clearly show whatever is being done is not enough and more pressure must be applied on Tehran.

Significantly, both letters have been signed by some Democrats, as well as the more critical Republicans.

Senate Democrats seem to have lost patience with Biden’s unwillingness to effectively enforce sanctions on Iran’s oil exports. They have joined their Republican colleagues to suggest immediate sanctions against ships and even foreign ports that carry Iranian oil.

They point out that the Iranian regime has taken in at least $88b from their oil exports since February 2021, compared to just $5b when former president Trump’s “maximum pressure” was still in place.

Iran now exports oil more than any time in the past five years, according to Japan’s influential daily Nikkei, with as much as 90% of the total exports going to China. This is confirmed also by United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which tracks Iranian oil exports.

"While global supply routes have been seriously affected by the Houthi attacks, Iran’s oil trade, especially to its number one importer, China, has continued unabated,” reads UANI’s latest report.

President Biden has been under growing pressure to reverse its policy on Iran since Hamas’ rampage of Israel –which many believe would have not been possible without the backing of the Iranian regime. The pressure has grown even further after last weekend’s deadly attack on American soldiers by Iran-backed militia Iraq.

“You cannot continue to embolden Iran,” Senator Marsha Blackburn said in an interview with Fox News Thursday. “You cannot continue to let them sell their oil and make billions of dollars, and then put that money into building nuclear warheads through uranium enrichment and through funding terrorism.”

Officials from the Biden administration say no Iran sanction has been lifted under their watch. But “enforcement” is as important as the actual sanctions. And it’s on the question of enforcement that the current administration seems to have disappointed many, even Democratic senators.

But what Biden critics want from him may not be readily achievable –not in 2024, at least.

"[Biden] prioritizes low oil prices, especially in an election year," says Robert McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group and a former senior White House policy official. "If [Biden] did crack down, it would impact global balances and prices, especially if Iran retaliated by threatening [Persian] Gulf production and export flows."

And then there’s China: Iran’s main customer which happens to be a global superpower. China can always find a way to get around the sanctions. It needs to: to keep feeding its gargantuan economy.

“Ultimately, China has and will continue to develop sanctions-proof entities which are not connected to the US financial system and won't be hurt (much) by sanctions,” former state department advisor on Iran Gabriel Noronha posted on X. “Leverage has to come from other files - as with recent China negotiations, find pressure everywhere."