The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on an Iranian foreign currency exchange house and associated front companies on Tuesday, saying they oversee hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of already-sanctioned Iranian banks.
“Iran’s shadow banking system facilitates the illicit transfer of funding for terrorist purposes,” said Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury. “As Treasury systematically dismantles Tehran’s shadow banking system and shadow fleet under Economic Fury, financial institutions must be alert to how the regime manipulates the international financial system to wreak havoc.”
The sanctioned exchange house, Ebrahimi and Associates Partnership Company, also known as Amin Exchange, is one of several exchange houses that oversee “a sprawling network of foreign front companies” in order to allow sanctioned Iranian banks to receive funds from oil and petrochemical sales, the treasury explained.
The officials running Amin Exchange were named as Turkish, Iranian, and Dominican national Yousef Ebrahimi and his brother, Mahmoud; Iranian national Samad Nemati; and Turkey-based Iranian national Ali Hazrati Chakherlo.
“Senior shadow banking network officials, including exchange house owners and their families, routinely maintain multiple foreign citizenships, often obtained from offshore jurisdictions through citizenship-by-investment schemes,” the Treasury explained. “These foreign identity documents, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, allow such individuals to travel freely and establish new companies overseas. They also demonstrate how shadow banking personnel personally enrich themselves and live lavishly at the expense of the Iranian people.”
The sanctioned front companies included five in China and three in the United Arab Emirates.
OFAC also sanctioned 19 ships involved in Iranian oil shipments on Tuesday, stating that they generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran.
The vessels sanctioned by the Treasury were not Iranian-flagged, but have shipped millions of barrels of Iranian petrochemicals, naptha, and oil since 2025.
