Ten Iranian nationals charged with evading US sanctions
Prosecutors in the United States have charged 10 Iranian nationals over an alleged long-running scheme to dodge US sanctions on Tehran by disguising $300m in transactions, including the purchase of two oil tankers.
The eight men and two women were outside the US and had not been arrested, a spokesman for the US Attorneys Office in Los Angeles said on Friday.
He declined to say if foreign governments had been asked to take them into custody, Reuters reported.
"In a wide-ranging scheme spanning nearly two decades and several continents, the defendants conspired to abuse the US financial system to conduct hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions on behalf of the government of Iran," Acting US Attorney Tracy Wilkison said in a statement.
All 10 defendants were charged with conspiracy to violate legal sanctions against Iran.
The US government has also filed a civil forfeiture action seeking more than $157m.
Reuters was not able to contact any of the accused and it was not clear if they had retained attorneys.
Piping equipment
Prosecutors say the scheme dates back to 1999, when defendants Seyed Ziaeddin Taheri Zangakani, Salim Henareh and Issa Shayegh opened a business called Persepolis Financial Services in Los Angeles, which was allegedly used to illegally funnel US dollars to Iran.
The three men later moved to Canada and the United Arab Emirates, where they used Persepolis and a second front company, Rosco, to carry out further transactions, aided by defendant Reza Karimi and others, according to the criminal complaint.
In 2012, Zangakari and another defendant, Abbas Amin, wired $20m to Malaysia to buy piping equipment for an Iranian oil company, the document said.
Zangakari, Amin, Salim Henareh and Khalil Henraheh are charged with using a Hong Kong-based front company to quietly buy two $25m oil tankers from a Greek businessman that same year.
The Greek businessman, who is not named in the documents, was later sanctioned by the US government.
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