The US Treasury is offering whistleblowers up to 30% of collected penalties for information leading to enforcement actions over Iran-related sanctions evasion or money laundering, as Washington seeks intelligence on Tehran’s financial networks abroad.
The offer is detailed in a Financial Crimes Enforcement Network bulletin seen by Iran International. FinCEN said it is seeking tips from both US and non-US whistleblowers about individuals or entities suspected of violating American sanctions or the Bank Secrecy Act, including Iranian proxies and facilitators operating outside Iran.
Information that results in a successful Treasury or Justice Department action collecting more than $1 million in penalties can qualify for an award of 10% to 30% of the amount collected, Treasury said. It added that awards may, at its discretion, even go to people working directly or indirectly for the Iranian government or state-owned enterprises.
FinCEN’s whistleblower program predates Operation Economic Outcast, but the latest bulletin specifically solicits information on Iran-related illicit finance. Earlier this year, FinCEN issued a separate whistleblower bulletin on fraud-related anti-money laundering and sanctions violations and proposed rules for administering whistleblower awards.
The Iran bulletin identifies activity involving the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Iraq and China among potential indicators of sanctions evasion. It also points to suspicious shipping documentation, exchange houses, front companies and digital-asset transactions as areas where people with direct knowledge could provide information.
The initiative comes under Operation Economic Outcast, launched by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on August 24. The campaign expanded the scope of secondary sanctions and warned foreign companies and financial institutions that facilitating Iranian sanctions evasion or money laundering could jeopardize their access to the US financial system. Treasury says it is targeting financial channels used by Tehran for oil sales, payments, procurement and other revenue.
Bessent highlighted the whistleblower push in a post on X on Monday, saying people anywhere in the world with actionable information could qualify for an award “no matter where you live or who signs your paycheck.”
“If you see something, say something,” he added.
Increased risks for foreign firms
The whistleblower appeal follows a series of actions against foreign financial channels that Washington says have helped Iran move money internationally.
Treasury sanctioned Turkey’s Golden Global Bank and two subsidiaries on September 4, alleging that the Istanbul-based lender facilitated tens of millions of dollars in transactions for the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and helped move Iranian oil proceeds from China into Turkey. Golden Global denied the allegations and said it complied with applicable banking regulations.
In the UAE, Washington has used a different mechanism. FinCEN proposed on August 28 to bar the UAE operations of Egypt’s Banque Misr from US correspondent banking after identifying them as a “primary money laundering concern.” FinCEN said the branches had processed about $1.8 billion between January 2024 and June 2026 for 103 companies potentially connected to Iranian shadow-banking networks. The proposed measure applies only to Banque Misr’s UAE operations and has not yet become a final rule.
An Iran International investigation earlier this month found that Iran’s shadow banking network extended substantially beyond the institutions targeted by Washington. Leaked Bank Parsian correspondence and transaction records showed one sanctioned Iranian bank directing funds through 15 banks in China and the UAE and 33 beneficiary companies over a seven-month period.
Thirteen of those 15 foreign banks had faced no publicly recorded US enforcement action over their role at the time of the investigation. Iran International found no evidence that the UAE and Chinese banks knowingly facilitated Iran’s efforts to circumvent US sanctions.
Bessent has repeatedly reinforced Treasury’s warnings to foreign institutions. After Golden Global was sanctioned, he wrote on X that financial institutions were “finding out the hard way” that Washington was serious about Economic Outcast, adding: “We know who you are, we know where you are.” Days later, he told Real America’s Voice that Washington would continue the campaign “until everyone stops dealing with this regime,” warning of potentially severe financial consequences for those that continued.
Bessent told lawmakers this week that Washington had held “very good private discussions” with China over Iran’s financial links and pointed to public signals from the UAE about restricting Tehran’s access to financing. He is due to meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng this weekend ahead of talks between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
The FinCEN bulletin adds a financial incentive for insiders to provide evidence that could underpin future cases, potentially giving US authorities information from within the same banking, trading and intermediary networks they are seeking to target.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said its report examined the 2025-2026 protests and found that killings by state security forces took place across all 31 provinces. It described the repression as an unprecedented escalation from previous crackdowns.
At least 221 children were reported killed, some as young as two, while tens of thousands of people were detained, according to the report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council.
Security forces fired at crowds
The mission said security forces positioned themselves on rooftops and other elevated locations and fired assault rifles into crowds.
In Karaj, forces used tear gas to trap demonstrators in narrow alleys before shooting at them, the report said. Protesters suffered severe injuries to the head, chest and eyes from metal shotgun pellets, with some left permanently blind.
Security forces also attacked healthcare facilities, beating and arresting wounded protesters and detaining some healthcare workers, according to the mission. It said the actions deterred injured people from seeking treatment.
Five-month internet shutdown
Iranian authorities imposed a nationwide internet and communications blackout on January 8, at the height of the violence, the mission said.
The shutdown lasted more than five months, which the mission described as the longest nationwide communications shutdown on record, restricting access to information and emergency coordination.
The report said tens of thousands of people were arbitrarily detained and that some faced torture, solitary confinement and denial of access to lawyers. Families were in some cases left without information about detainees' whereabouts, raising concerns of enforced disappearances.
Authorities also delayed or refused to return bodies to some families, demanded payments and pressured relatives to sign statements falsely describing victims as state agents, the mission said.
Executions linked to protests
The mission said Iran also intensified its use of the death penalty against people linked to the protests.
At least 29 men were executed between March and August 2026 following expedited trials, including five who were executed publicly.
More than 70 people, including five women and three boys, remained at imminent risk of execution, it said.
The mission concluded that violations including murder, imprisonment, torture and other inhumane acts amounted to crimes against humanity because they formed part of a widespread and systematic attack against civilians.
US strikes also examined
The report separately found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes during the conflict with Iran.
It said US Tomahawk missiles struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, killing more than 150 people, including about 120 children.
A separate US strike in Lamerd dispersed tungsten pellets over a sports complex and nearby residential area, killing 22 civilians, the mission said.
The mission said the attacks amounted to indiscriminate strikes resulting in civilian deaths and damage to civilian objects.
Golden Global Investment Bank was built largely by veterans of state-owned Halkbank, which itself inherited longstanding Iranian banking relationships when Turkey transferred the troubled Pamukbank to it two decades ago.
The same state fund that took control of Pamukbank in 2002 is now exercising shareholder rights covering nearly all of Golden Global.
The US Treasury sanctioned Golden Global, alleging it facilitated tens of millions of dollars in transactions for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and was established to help move Iranian oil revenues from China to Turkey for conversion into cash and gold.
Golden Global denies the allegations.
Turkey’s banking regulator moved on September 16 to put shareholder rights covering nearly all of Golden Global under the control of the country’s Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF).
The decision covers stakes held by three shareholders and excludes dividend rights. It comes three days before a US authorization to wind down dealings involving the bank expires.
Corporate filings show Golden Global drew its founding and subsequent leadership heavily from Halkbank. The bank opened in Istanbul in June 2020 with former Halkbank bankers as chairman and general manager, then recruited other veterans as chief executive, vice chairman, board member and compliance head.
Treasury’s designation does not name any of the Halkbank veterans personally. Their career connections are documented in corporate filings and published biographies; the US allegations concern Golden Global and its subsidiaries.
The sanctions came less than three months after a federal judge dismissed the US criminal case against Halkbank on June 17. That prosecution concerned alleged Iranian sanctions evasion between 2012 and 2016 and ended under a deferred prosecution agreement, without an admission of wrongdoing by Halkbank.
Golden Global faces a separate administrative sanctions action.
From Pamukbank to Halkbank
Pamukbank was a privately owned Turkish deposit bank founded in 1955. It established a representative office in Tehran in 1984 to support business between Turkey and Iran, two decades before becoming part of Halkbank.
Reporting on its opening, the Turkish newspaper Milliyet cited Pamukbank general manager Ibrahim Betil as saying inadequate banking links were hampering trade between the two countries. The bank said its Tehran presence would help financing and communication with Turkish businesses.
Pamukbank came under TMSF control in 2002 and was transferred to Halkbank in November 2004. Its assets, liabilities and branches passed to the state-owned lender, including the Tehran office and accounts Iranian banks already held at Pamukbank.
By 2005, Halkbank was publicly promoting its access to Iran’s oil business. Its annual report described it as the only Turkish bank authorized to open letters of credit directly to the National Iranian Oil Company. The Turkish edition also said its Tehran office helped handle large foreign-trade transactions with Iran.
Former Halkbank executive Hakan Atilla later testified in a US trial that the bank initially made only a preliminary assessment of the Iranian relationships inherited from Pamukbank and returned to them after its 2007 initial public offering. Halkbank itself later dated its Iran-related foreign-trade activity to 2004.
In January 2008, US Treasury Under Secretary Stuart Levey pressed Halkbank’s senior management over those Iranian ties. A US diplomatic cable records him urging the bank to close Iranian correspondent accounts and warning against expanding relationships with Iranian financial institutions seeking international partners.
The pressure continued in 2009, when Treasury officials warned Halkbank about Iranian efforts to disguise transactions. Halkbank officials said they financed documented trade and did not handle third-party, transit or cash-for-goods transactions.
From Halkbank to Golden Global
Golden Global later recruited bankers who had built their careers at Pamukbank and Halkbank, including in international banking, foreign operations and compliance.
The bank received its operating licence in early 2020 and opened for business on June 1. Its founding chairman, Mustafa Akin, had begun his career at Pamukbank in 1986 and managed branches for Pamukbank and Halkbank between 1994 and 2011.
Golden Global’s first general manager, Ozay Balta, had started at Halkbank as an assistant inspector in 2004 and served as a branch manager from 2012 to 2016. His published biography lists no other employer before Golden Global.
Yavuz Yeter became general manager in May 2024. He had joined Pamukbank’s Board of Inspectors in 1996 and moved to Halkbank in the 2004 merger, later serving in senior roles in its International Banking and Structured Finance department.
Yeter was therefore in senior international-banking roles during the period when Halkbank advertised its access to the National Iranian Oil Company and received Levey’s warning. That chronology does not establish that he handled the Iranian business. Atilla assigned responsibility for the Iranian accounts and Tehran office to a separate department.
Yeter later moved into senior central-bank roles. From 2016 to 2019 he held a banking-and-financial-institutions post at Turkey’s central bank. From 2020 to 2023 he served as its representative and economic attaché in Frankfurt, then advised its Istanbul office before joining Golden Global.
Coskun Cabuk joined Halkbank in the 2004 merger and worked across inspection, corporate banking and regional coordination, according to Golden Global’s 2025 annual report. The report gives no dates for those individual posts.
Cabuk stayed at Halkbank until 2017, then ran its leasing subsidiary, Halk Finansal Kiralama, until 2024. Golden Global shareholders elected him to the board for two years in March 2025 but his seat ended only a year later. Cabuk became general manager of Turkland Bank in July 2026.
The Halkbank connection also extended to compliance. Golden Global’s 2025 annual report identifies Cigdem Sefer as head of regulation and compliance. She began at Halkbank in 1996 and worked in its foreign operations, international banking and compliance units before joining Golden Global in November 2025.
Her unit’s responsibilities include evaluating correspondent relationships, screening customers and transactions against national and international sanctions, and overseeing obligations relating to money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing.
Gold, cash and correspondent banking
Correspondent banking—the use of other banks to process payments and gain access to financial systems abroad—is central to Treasury’s allegations against Golden Global.
Treasury alleges the bank knowingly provided such services to Iranian financial institutions, enabling transactions through accounts controlled by the IRGC-QF and its proxies. It places Golden Global within Iran’s rahbar system, which it describes as a network of companies coordinating overseas payments for Iranian banks through foreign accounts and money exchangers.
The alleged network used correspondent banking, gold and cash to move funds.
The Treasury identifies Turkish businessman Sitki Ayan and his companies among the networks involved. OFAC sanctioned that network in 2022. Golden Global says it has had no direct or indirect dealings with those individuals..
Golden Global’s own figures show substantial growth in those areas of its business. Its 2025 report lists 45 accounts held at 20 banks in 17 countries and 66 accounts hosted for 25 banks from 16 countries. Those 25 banks are not identified.
Fees paid for foreign settlement services rose 56 percent in 2025 to 482 million lira. The bank also reported playing a critical role in settling $1.8 billion in gold transactions in 2025, nearly three times the $613 million reported a year earlier.
Physical banknote trading reached $4.4 billion, an increase of about 70%. Golden Global also reported $21.9 billion in interbank foreign-exchange trades, nearly double the previous year, and $14.5 billion in currency swaps, more than twice the 2024 total.
The reports document substantial activity in the same types of services Treasury says the Iranian network used. Those aggregate figures do not, on their own, establish which transactions involved sanctioned parties.
The September 19 deadline
Treasury designated Golden Global under Executive Order 13902, which targets specified sectors of Iran’s economy, including finance. It placed the action within Operation Economic Outcast, a campaign announced in August to intensify pressure on Iran’s remaining financial and trading channels.
The sanctions are already in effect. OFAC’s General License CC provides limited authorization for transactions ordinarily necessary to wind down dealings involving Golden Global and other covered entities. That authorization expires at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on September 19.
The license carries conditions, including a requirement that payments to blocked persons go into blocked, interest-bearing accounts in the United States. When it expires, transactions covered by the licence lose that authorization.
Treasury has also warned that foreign financial institutions conducting or facilitating certain significant transactions on behalf of designated entities could face prohibitions or restrictions on their US correspondent accounts.
For Golden Global, whose business reaches counterparties across more than a dozen countries, the immediate pressure therefore extends beyond its Istanbul office to the institutions connecting it to the international financial system.
The previously undisclosed meeting was held at the US Embassy in Muscat, three of the sources told Reuters. Two said Oman, a longtime regional mediator, helped organize the talks.
One source said the meeting took place on Sunday. US embassy personnel represented Washington, while the Houthi delegation included senior official Mohammad Abdulsalam, who is under US sanctions, and Abdelmalik al-Ajiri, according to Reuters.
Houthis say US ships not a target
The Houthis told US officials they did not intend to attack American vessels and remained committed to a ceasefire reached with Washington in 2025, two sources told Reuters.
A Yemeni source said the group also said it would not attack Israeli ships or other commercial vessels, except those belonging to Saudi Arabia.
The State Department did not confirm the meeting but said protecting freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and preventing terrorism from spreading from the Middle East were core US interests.
President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the Houthis had contacted his administration and asked Washington to stay out of the Yemen war. Vice President JD Vance said on Monday that the United States was in direct contact with the group.
Talks come despite terrorist designation
The Trump administration designated the Houthis a "foreign terrorist organization" in March 2025.
Washington nevertheless negotiated with the group later that year and reached a ceasefire in May after two months of US strikes aimed at stopping attacks on Red Sea shipping.
The latest talks came after the Houthis seized effective control of Yemen's Red Sea coastline, including the port of Mocha and Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key route for international shipping.
Saudi-Houthi fighting intensifies
Later on Wednesday, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said that the group had attacked an airbase in Khamis Mushait as well as Aramco facilities in Yanbu. Saudi Arabia did not confirm either of the attacks.
The Houthis have fought a Saudi-led coalition for more than a decade after seizing Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in 2014.
Fighting had largely eased under a ceasefire but resumed in July after the Houthis declared a blockade of Saudi shipping in the Red Sea in response to a Saudi blockade of Yemeni ports.
Saudi warplanes have since struck Houthi positions as the group has advanced along the Red Sea coast and launched attacks toward Saudi Arabia.
Riyadh sought US help
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump last week seeking US military support as the Houthi offensive accelerated, Reuters reported.
Washington told Riyadh it would not become directly involved in the fighting, according to Reuters.
The escalation has also increased pressure on global energy supplies already disrupted by the Iran war and reduced shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said on Monday it had filed a civil forfeiture complaint over the assets, which prosecutors said were linked to a network that moved more than $1.5 billion in proceeds from Iranian oil sales.
The IRGC is designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.
Prosecutors target oil payment network
"Today's action demonstrates our determination to deprive the Government of Iran and its terrorist proxies of the illegal money they rely on to threaten the lives and safety of the citizens of the United States and elsewhere," Deputy US Attorney Sean S. Buckley said.
Buckley said Iran relied on black-market sales of sanctioned crude oil to fund its military and other activities.
"As alleged in the complaint filed today, the Government of Iran used a network of cryptocurrency actors in China and elsewhere to launder more than $1.5 billion in illicit oil money intended to benefit the Iranian military and the terror-designated IRGC," he said.
Chinese companies named in complaint
The complaint said two Chinese companies, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, used accounts at cryptocurrency exchange Binance in the United Arab Emirates to move proceeds from Iranian oil sales.
Prosecutors said Blessed Trust presented itself as a wealth management or virtual asset custodial services firm but received and transferred proceeds from Iranian crude oil and petroleum product sales. They said it also helped convert traditional currency into cryptocurrency, including through US-based cryptocurrency issuers.
Hexa Whale presented itself as a commodities broker but provided similar services and worked with Blessed Trust and related entities, according to the complaint.
More than $1.5 billion moved through addresses
The complaint said a group of linked, unhosted cryptocurrency addresses identified as "Entity A" received and distributed more than $1.5 billion in proceeds from Iranian oil sales.
Prosecutors said the addresses sent funds to money services businesses and cryptocurrency addresses linked to the IRGC, as well as to an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange.
They said transactions involving Blessed Trust, Hexa Whale and people associated with the companies were structured to conceal the source, ownership and nature of the funds. The complaint also said the two companies used the US financial system to send or receive tens of millions of dollars.
FBI says action cuts funding
"Today's complaint demonstrates the FBI's ability to follow the money, root out illicit schemes, and halt the stream of cryptocurrency to any government attempting to evade sanctions or committing terrorist activities," said James C. Barnacle Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York field office.
"By cutting off funds raised by the black-market sale of crude oil, the Iranian military and terrorists are weakened," Barnacle said.
The US Attorney's Office said a civil forfeiture complaint contains allegations that money or property was involved in, or represents proceeds from, a crime. The allegations have not been proven, and a court must rule in favor of the United States before the assets can be forfeited.
