Sanctioning an Iranian Financial Evasion Network

The United States is holding Babak Zanjani and his sprawling network accountable for enabling the Iranian regime to evade sanctions and finance its destabilizing activities, including supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.  This action applies further pressure on the Iranian regime following its attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz and regional neighbors. 

Today’s action targets four individuals and nine entities tied to Zanjani’s operations. Zanjani’s re-emergence as a regime-linked financier—despite previously receiving a death sentence in Iran for embezzlement—demonstrates the lengths to which Iranian state-affiliated elites will go to preserve access to the international financial system so that they can enrich themselves, even as they mismanage the Iranian economy. The United States calls on governments and financial institutions worldwide not to engage with entities connected to Zanjani or the broader networks that prop up Iran’s security apparatus. The Iranian regime is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, and for more than 40 years has used the IRGC to foment instability in the region and beyond. We will continue to expose and disrupt networks that provide the regime and its proxies with the resources they use to undermine U.S. national security interests.

Today’s action is being taken pursuant to Executive Order 13902, which targets Iran’s financial, petroleum, and petrochemical sectors to restrict revenue that could fund Iran’s nuclear, missile and terrorist activities. For more information on today’s action, please see the Department of the Treasury’s press release.