US sanctions Iranian financiers over cryptocurrency transfers from oil sales

Two Iranian financiers and more than a dozen people and firms across Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates were sanctioned on Tuesday for allegedly co-ordinating 100 million dollars (£73.2 million) worth of cryptocurrency transfers from the sale of Iranian oil.

The US Treasury alleges that Iranian nationals Alireza Derakhshan and Arash Estaki Alivand facilitated the purchase of more than 100 million dollars worth of cryptocurrency for oil sales for the Iranian government.

The two then used a network of front companies across countries to transfer the cryptocurrency funds, the Treasury says.

So-called “shadow banking” networks such as these evade sanctions by laundering money through overseas front companies and cryptocurrency.

Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence John K Hurley said in a statement that the US “will continue to disrupt these key financial streams that fund Iran’s weapons programmes and malign activities in the Middle East and beyond”.

To authorise the sanctions, the US used an executive order that President Donald Trump issued in February called the National Security Presidential Memorandum 2, which calls for the US to “drive Iran’s export of oil to zero”.

It also states that Iran “can never be allowed to acquire or develop nuclear weapons”.

Among other things, the sanctions deny the people and firms access to any property or financial assets held in the United States and prevent US companies and citizens from doing business with them.

Iran and other sanctioned nations have increasingly used cryptocurrency to evade sanctions. The crypto tracking firm Chainalysis reports that sanctioned jurisdictions and entities, such as Iran, received 15.8 billion dollars (£11.5 billion) in cryptocurrency in 2024, accounting for about 39% of all illicit crypto transactions.

The latest sanctions also come after France, Britain and Germany triggered a “snapback mechanism ” that automatically reimposes all United Nations sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, saying Iran has wilfully departed from their 2015 nuclear deal that lifted the measures.

The US and Iran tried to reach a new nuclear deal earlier this year, but those talks have not resumed since the 12-day Israeli bombardment of Iran’s nuclear and military sites and the US bombardment on June 22.