Justice officials say the seizure of the shipment by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the largest seizure of government fuel ever from Iran.
Following the execution of a court-ordered seizure order, the government confiscated nearly 1,116 million tons of petroleum product cargo on board four foreign oil tankers named M / T Bella, M / T Pandi, M / T Luna and M / T Bering, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in the press release.
When the counterfeiting operation was completed, “the Iranian navy forcibly entered an unrelated ship in an apparent attempt to recover the seized petroleum, but was unsuccessful,” prosecutors said.
“The proceeds from these shipments would likely have benefited Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated organization for foreign terrorists,” State Department spokesman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement Friday, adding that the proceeds ” if successfully forgotten in U.S. courts, could now support the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund in place of those involved in terrorism, such as the IRGC. “
Last May, federal authorities from the Southern District of New York announced the seizure of a North Korean cargo ship that was used to transport valuable coal to other countries and sold it to finance its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile program.
The North Korean ship named M / V Wise Honest has towed heavy machinery into its country, including 412,584 kilograms of “steel plate.”
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