US slaps new sanctions on individuals and firms that help Iran sell its oil

The latest US Treasury Department determination comes arsenic portion of efforts to marque it much hard for Iran to merchantability lipid abroad.

The United States has issued a caller wave of sanctions against Iran, targeting radical and entities it says are progressive successful illicit money transfers that payment the country’s subject activities.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) confirmed connected Tuesday that it had sanctioned much than a twelve Iranian individuals and companies based successful Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.

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Those targeted, the OFAC said, had helped to determination funds for the payment of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Iranian Ministry of Defence.

Some of the wealth came from the merchantability of Iranian oil, the US Treasury added.

“Iranian ‘shadow banking’ networks similar these — tally by trusted illicit fiscal facilitators — maltreatment the planetary fiscal system, and evade sanctions by laundering wealth done overseas beforehand companies and cryptocurrency,” it said.

John K Hurley, the US Treasury’s undersecretary for coercion and fiscal intelligence, added that the Trump medication would proceed to disrupt wealth flowing into “Iran’s weapons programmes and malign activities successful the Middle East and beyond”.

The US authorities alleges that Iranian nationals Alireza Derakhshan and Arash Estaki Alivand, who are some connected the caller sanctions list, facilitated the acquisition of $100m worthy of cryptocurrency for the Iranian government.

As a effect of the sanctions, they and the different radical and entities being targeted suffer their close to immoderate assets held successful the US. US companies and citizens are besides forbidden from doing concern with them.

The determination comes arsenic portion of US President Donald Trump’s extremity of driving Iran’s lipid exports “to zero”.

Tehran has not yet responded to the move.

In August, the US went aft a planetary web of companies owned by the Greek shipper Antonios Margaritis.

“Margaritis has leveraged his decades of acquisition successful the shipping manufacture to illicitly facilitate the proscription and merchantability of Iranian petroleum,” the US Treasury claimed.

The targeting of Margaritis followed several different rounds of sanctions designed to marque it much challenging for Tehran to merchantability its lipid overseas.