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.
That sum is a fraction of the operation prosecutors describe in the civil forfeiture complaint. A cluster of self-custodied wallets received and distributed more than $1.5 billion in oil proceeds, routing funds to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked businesses, other crypto addresses and an Iranian exchange, according to the filing. 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.
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. Bitcoin has no issuer, so no blacklist function and bitcoin held without intermediaries can’t be frozen
“The Government of Iran relies on black-market sales of sanctioned crude oil to fund its military and foster terrorism in the Middle East and around the world, along with other malign efforts to develop a nuclear program and ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads,” Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean S. Buckley said in a statement.
“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.”
The filing alleges that the illicit oil money was laundered via Chinese companies Blessed Trust Limited and Hexa Whale Trading Limited.
Once the money was laundered, it was funneled back to Iran’s government, its agents, and its proxies, feds said.
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.
OFAC said at the time that Hormuz Safe, developed by Iran’s Ministry of Economy, “accepts payment in bitcoin and other digital assets” so it can bypass sanctions.
The Financial Times last week reported that the Middle Eastern country was using bitcoin to settle cross-border transactions through Iranian crypto exchanges after the central bank advised its countrymen to do anything necessary to help the economy.
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