Forfeiture complaints were sent in on Wednesday, saying that $47 million from the sale of almost a million barrels of Iranian oil should be returned. This is according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
According to the U.S. attorney’s office, the forfeiture action is related to a plan that took place between 2022 and 2024 to ship, store, and sell Iranian oil goods to help the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Qods Force (IRGC-QF).
The department confirmed that both the IRGC and the IRGC-QF are Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the U.S. government.
The U.S. attorney’s office says that the oil was really from Iran, but the middlemen made it look like it came from Malaysia by messing with the tanker’s automatic identification system.
The U.S. attorney’s office said that fake papers were given to the Croatian port officials and that storage fees were paid for with U.S. dollars at banks that would have turned down the transactions if they had known the source was Iranian.
The department said for sure that the oil was sold in 2024 and that the US seized $47 million in the deal’s profits.
The U.S. attorney’s office also said the oil belonged to the National Iranian Oil Company, which broke federal terrorism laws by giving material support to the IRGC and IRGC-QF.
U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr. said, “We will aggressively enforce U.S. sanctions against Iran.” “By continuing to seize Iranian oil and U.S. dollar profits, we are making it clear that getting around sanctions isn’t as easy as playing shell games with tankers.”
