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US Indicts Ten Iranians In Biggest Legal Action During Biden Presidency

US prosecutors charged 10 Iranian nationals on Friday [ March 19] over an alleged long-running operation to dodge US sanctions on Tehran by disguising $300 million in transactions, including the purchase of two oil tankers.

The eight men and two women were outside the United States and had not been arrested, a spokesman for the US Attorneys Office in Los Angeles said. He declined to say if foreign governments had been asked to take them into custody.

“The FBI has a keen ability to track nefarious actors who use the U.S. financial system to evade sanctions,” said Alan E. Kohler, Jr., Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. “Our investigation revealed over 70 front companies were used by these individuals to hide their conspiracy in support of the Iranian Governments pursuit of nuclear weapons and sponsorship of terrorism.”

This is the biggest legal case launched since President Joe Biden took office against violators of Iran sanctions, although the investigation must have been going on for some time. Biden has said he wants to return to the 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by his predecessor but so far has not lifted any of the sanctions imposed since 2018. The Administration has demanded that Iran should first stop its violations of the agreement.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers announcing civil forfeiture action seeking $157 million said, “This is only right. Through the use of front companies, money service businesses and exchanges throughout the world, the defendants worked to disguise hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of transactions on behalf of a state sponsor of terrorism. Make no mistake, the Department of Justice will continue to deploy all tools necessary to curb the Iranian regime’s ability to use the U.S. financial system to support its malign endeavors.”

"In a wide-ranging scheme spanning nearly two decades and several continents, the defendants conspired to abuse the U.S. financial system to conduct hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions on behalf of the government of Iran," Acting U.S. Attorney Tracy Wilkison said in a statement.

All ten defendants were charged with conspiracy to violate legal sanctions against Iran. The U.S. government has also filed a civil forfeiture action seeking more than $157 million.

Reuters was not able to contact any of the accused and it was not clear if they had retained attorneys.

Prosecutors say the scheme dates back to 1999, when defendants Seyed Ziaeddin Taheri Zangakani, Salim Henareh and Issa Shayegh opened a business called Persepolis Financial Services in Los Angeles, which was used to illegally funnel U.S. dollars to Iran.

The three men later moved to Canada and the United Arab Emirates where they used Persepolis and a second front company, Rosco, to carry out further transactions, aided by defendant Reza Karimi and others, according to the criminal complaint.

In 2012 Zangakari and another defendant, Abbas Amin, wired $20 million to Malaysia to buy piping equipment for an Iranian oil company, the document said.

Zangakari, Amin, Salim Henareh and Khalil Henraheh are charged with used a Hong Kong-based front company to quietly buy two $25 million oil tankers from a Greek businessman that same year. The Greek businessman, who is not named in the documents, was later sanctioned by the U.S. government.

With reporting by Reuters

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