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All tagged OFAC
◢ A new Swiss payment mechanism allowing food, medicine and other humanitarian aid to be sent to Iran without stumbling over US sanctions has officially taken effect, Bern said Thursday. Iran has been facing severe medical shortages since the US pulled out of a landmark nuclear deal and reimposed crippling sanctions on the country in 2018.
◢ The U.S. lifted sanctions against a unit of China’s biggest shipping company that was accused of hauling Iranian crude in violation of American restrictions. The penalties had barred U.S. citizens and companies from dealing with the firms, effectively blocking them from American banks at the heart of the global financial system.
◢ An Indonesian man and three businesses from that nation have been charged with plotting to send goods and technology to Iran in violation of American economic sanctions. Sunarko Kuntjoro, who remains at large in Indonesia, and the three companies face an eight-count indictment in Washington.
◢ Washington's sanctions against Tehran have drastically reduced available channels for humanitarian imports and are threatening the health rights of Iranians, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. Iranian patients have struggled with a foreign medicine shortage and price hikes for over a year both due to reimposed US trade sanctions as well as a battered economy with a free-falling currency.
◢ Companies still doing business with a U.S.-sanctioned unit of China’s biggest shipping company have less than 60 days to wind down their transactions. The temporary reprieve comes after last month’s surprise announcement of sanctions against the Dalian units of China COSCO Shipping Corp.
◢ The U.S. Treasury Department’s top sanctions official, Sigal Mandelker, plans to leave the Trump administration after helping to increase the pace of economic penalties against American adversaries. Mandelker, who joined the Treasury Department in June 2017, has helped lead new sanctions on countries including North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran.
◢ Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said the U.S. is “working diligently” toward a diplomatic resolution with Iran after accusing the Islamic Republic of attacks on Saudi Arabian oil fields, but that President Donald Trump is prepared to take other action if necessary.
◢ The US Treasury named a group of companies in Iran, Belgium and China to its sanctions blacklist Thursday for acting as a supply network for Tehran's nuclear enrichment program. The companies served as a procurement network for Iran's Centrifuge Technology Company (TESA), which produces enrichment centrifuges for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), the Treasury said.
◢ Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made clear that participating in the U.S. financial system means abiding by its sanctions amid a European effort to sidestep American economic pressure on Iran to continue trade. “We’ve been very clear that we expect U.S. sanctions to be adhered to,” Mnuchin said in response to questions from reporters on Thursday.
◢ Iraq is establishing a financial "loophole" to continue buying vital gas and electricity from Iran despite US sanctions, AFP has learned, mirroring a European mechanism that came into effect Friday. The "special purpose vehicle" (SPV) would allow Iraq to pay for imported Iranian energy in Iraqi dinars, which Iran could use to exclusively buy humanitarian goods, three senior Iraqi officials said.
◢ President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and eight senior military commanders, a provocative step designed to increase pressure on the Islamic Republic. Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that the penalties would deny Khamenei and his office access to financial resources.
◢ The US Treasury placed Iraq-based South Wealth Resources on its sanctions blacklist Wednesday, saying the company is an important weapons trafficking and financial front for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Treasury said the company, Manabea Tharwat al-Janoob General Trading Company, was used by the IRGC to smuggle "hundreds of millions of dollars' worth" of weapons to IRGC allies in Iraq.
◢ The Trump administration is weighing sanctions against the Iranian financial body set up as a go-between for humanitarian trade with Europe, a move likely to sever the economic and humanitarian lifeline that France, Germany and the U.K. have sought to create for Tehran.
◢ The United States has hit Iran's petrochemical group PGPIC with economic sanctions due to its ties with the country's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the Treasury Department announced on Friday. The move aims to choke off financing to the country's largest and most profitable petrochemical group and extends to its 39 subsidiaries and "foreign-based sales agents," Treasury said in a statement.
◢ A German unit of the Italian bank UniCredit SpA pleaded guilty to U.S. charges that it allowed Iranian customers to conduct transactions in violation of sanctions. As part of its settlement with several U.S. regulators, the bank will pay $1.3 billion and its Austrian unit will enter into a deferred-prosecution agreement.
◢ The US government has interviewed one Schlumberger Ltd. worker and wants access to four other current and former employees as part of a probe into potential sanctions violations in Iran and Sudan, according to federal court documents. The unnamed worker for the world’s biggest oil-services provider was interviewed on March 8 about a matter related to a company Schlumberger acquired in 2014.
