The U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday that it filed a civil forfeiture claim for $61 million in cryptocurrency, which it accused the Iranian military, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, of acquiring via black market oil sales.
The IRGC is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. A civil forfeiture complaint is an allegation that money or property was used in a crime or represents proceeds from a crime. A court may decide to forfeit the funds to the complainant.
“Today’s action demonstrates our determination to deprive the government of Iran and its terrorist proxies of the illegal money they rely on to threaten the lives and safety of the citizens of the United States and elsewhere,” stated Sean Buckley, deputy U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The regime “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,” Buckley stated.
The complaint alleged that two Chinese companies laundered illicit oil-sales revenue through trading accounts at a cryptocurrency exchange in the United Arab Emirates.
Both companies disguised themselves as legitimate financial services companies, with clients including companies in China’s petroleum and petroleum products sector, according to the Justice Department.
A network of self-managed or unhosted cryptocurrency addresses allegedly received and distributed about $1.5 billion from those sales.
The complaint “demonstrates the FBI’s ability to follow the money, root out illicit schemes and halt the stream of cryptocurrency to any government attempting to evade sanctions or committing terrorist activities,” stated James Barnacle Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI New York Field Office.
