Federal investigators have obtained orders to seize Iranian oil products aboard four oil tankers bound for Venezuela in violation of US sanctions, the Justice Department said Thursday.
FBI and Homeland Security investigators discovered that cargo ships, the Bella, the Bering, the Pandi and the Luna, are active in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a terrorist organization designated by the United States, according to a criminal complaint.
The proceeds from the shipments are purportedly to support terrorism and a “full range of nefarious activities,” ranging from the purchase of weapons of mass destruction to the financing of human rights abuses. The four ships carry a combined total of more than one million barrels of Iranian gasoline.
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The complaint alleges that Mahmoud Madanipour, an Iranian businessman with ties to the IRGC and an independent trading company based in the United Arab Emirates, organized the shipments and attempted to conceal Iranian and IRGC involvement.
But investigators said they were able to track the shipments anyway.
“Publicly available satellite tracking data known as the Automated Identification System (AIS) revealed that in March 2020, the Pandi visited the Sirus Oil Terminal in Iran,” the complaint alleges. “AIS also shows that the Pandi participated in a ship-to-ship transfer … to Bella on or about April 17.”
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Then, supposedly, Bella set sail with Iranian oil falsely identified as UAE cargo.
The other ships also used similar ship-to-ship transfers to try to hide their efforts, investigators said.
Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations, tweeted that an attempt by the United States to stop Iran’s licit international trade would be “piracy, outright.”
“This is a direct threat to international peace and security,” he wrote. “And in contravention of international law, including the Charter of the United Nations.”
Earlier this week, the Iranian government said it issued an arrest warrant for President Trump in connection with a missile attack that killed IRGC General Qassem Soleimani in January.
US officials called the move “a propaganda stunt that no one takes seriously.”
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Soleimani played a role in the deaths of 608 US troops during the Iraq war, according to the State Department. He was the leader of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force, an intelligence branch, and a designated terrorist group.
For months, the Trump administration has accelerated pressure on the shipping industry to adhere to U.S. sanctions against Iran, Venezueal, and North Korea. The Treasury Department has also cracked down on companies that violate them.
