China · DOJ · Iran · Tether · Bitcoin Magazine
Once the money was laundered, it was funneled back to Iran’s government, its agents, and its proxies, feds said
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The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in July said Iran had been dodging sanctions by accepting pay in bitcoin from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Key facts
- The U.S. Department of Justice has filed to forfeit $61 million in crypto it says was generated from Iranian black-market oil sales
- 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
- The U.S. Department of Justice said Monday it is seizing and seeking to forfeit $61 million in cryptocurrency that it alleges came from black-market sales of sanctioned Iranian oil
- Two China-based firms, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, allegedly used trading accounts at Binance to launder proceeds and funnel them to the Iranian government and its proxies
Summary
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed to forfeit $61 million in crypto it says was generated from Iranian black-market oil sales. Department of Justice said Monday it is seizing and seeking to forfeit $61 million in cryptocurrency that it alleges came from black-market sales of sanctioned Iranian oil. That sum is a fraction of the operation prosecutors describe in the civil forfeiture complaint. It comes after the U.S. tries to crack down on Iran’s use of the leading cryptocurrency: the U.S. in July said that it had frozen crypto linked to the Iranian regime, mostly in the form of Tether’s stablecoin; Iran started a bitcoin-backed insurance service for its counties shipping companies earlier this year. There was no mention of bitcoin in Monday’s claim, but the Iranian government is also using bitcoin to skirt around sanctions.