U.S. Extends Clampdown on Iran With Sanctions on Energy Firms

By Serene Cheong and Elizabeth Low

The U.S. sanctioned four companies that it says have traded hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Iranian petroleum and petrochemicals in its latest effort to clamp down on Iran’s revenue sources.

The Treasury Department penalized Triliance Petrochemical Co. Ltd., Sage Energy HK Limited, Peakview Industry Co. Limited, and Beneathco DMCC for dealings with the state-owned National Iranian Oil Co., it said in a Jan. 23 statement. The transactions helped finance Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force and its terrorist proxies, the department said.

The move is a continuation of the White House’s aggressive strategy to penalize firms dealing with Iran, a country it nearly went to war with earlier this month. Last July, It sanctioned Zhuhai Zhenrong Co., a secretive company with links to the Chinese military and a history of taking Iranian crude and fuel. A couple of months after that it threw global shipping markets into disarray after it penalized a unit of COSCO Shipping Corp.

“Iran’s petrochemical and petroleum sectors are a primary source of funding for the regime’s global terrorist activities and enable its persistent use of violence against its own people,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement.

In 2019, Triliance Petrochemical ordered the transfer of the equivalent of millions of dollars to NIOC as payment for Iranian petrochemicals, crude oil, and petroleum products shipped to the U.A.E. and China after the expiration of any applicable exceptions, the Treasury Department said. In facilitating these shipments, Triliance worked to conceal the origin of these products, it added.

Triliance and Sage are based in Hong Kong, while Peakview is headquartered in Shanghai and Beneathco in Dubai. Calls to Triliance’s head office went unanswered, while a person at Beneathco declined to immediately respond to questions. Contact information for Sage and Peakview wasn’t immediately available.

All property and interests in the property of the designated companies are blocked and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them, while foreign financial institutions that knowingly deal with them may be penalized, the department said.

Photo: IRNA

Iran Court Tries 13 in $7 Billion Petrochemical Fraud Case

The trial has started in an Iranian court for 13 petrochemical industry executives charged with embezzling EUR 6.6 billion USD 7.4 billion) in one of the nation’s biggest corruption cases, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported. 

The defendants, most either chief executives or board members of Iranian petrochemical producers and exporters, are accused of “causing a great economic disturbance” by establishing shell companies overseas to circumvent sanctions imposed while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was president, judge Assadollah Masoudi Magham said, according to IRNA.

Reading from a 700-page indictment, another judicial official added that billions of euros worth of sales from petrochemical exports were funneled to the companies as purchases, the Mehr news agency reported on Thursday.

The case, described by IRNA as “record-breaking” for its monetary value, is the latest in a series of trials and investigations started after the government of President Hassan Rouhani and the hardline judiciary vowed to root-out corruption in response to rising public anger over levels of cronyism and economic nepotism within industry and government.

The return in August of U.S. sanctions, the most punitive ever imposed on the Islamic Republic by Washington, has brought fresh urgency to the efforts as people are being forced to cope with steep increases in prices and a collapse in the rial, which have cut the value of their paychecks and spending power.

Photo Credit: IRNA