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US Targets Alleged Iran Financial Network Over Strait of Hormuz Shipping Attacks

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US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control on Friday imposed sanctions on alleged Iranian financial facilitator Ali Ansari, following Tehran's attacks on international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

OFAC alleged Ansari heads a global financial network benefiting Iran's leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.

Ansari "has effectively institutionalized large-scale embezzlement within the Iranian regime, diverting publicly funded wealth into an extensive overseas portfolio of real estate and commercial holdings to enrich himself, regime elites... and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ...," OFAC said in its statement.

Additionally, OFAC also targeted exchange firms allegedly transferring billions in funds across sanctioned Iranian banks through shell companies.

"Treasury will continue using every tool at its disposal to isolate him and other regime elites from the global financial system. We will preserve these assets for the Iranian people," US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in the statement.

The developments are part of broader US sanctions targeting Iranian shadow banking and currency house networks, entities operating in the country's financial and petroleum sectors.

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