US imposes new sanctions against Iranian billionaire Babak Zanjani for enabling regime
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "US imposes new sanctions against Iranian billionaire Babak Zanjani for enabling regime")
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Iranian regime continues to pay a steep economic price for its reckless behaviour Photograph: (AFP)
According to the US Treasury Department, Iranian billionaire Babak Zanjani was sentenced to death for allegedly embezzling millions from the National Iranian Oil Company, but his sentence was commuted in 2024, and then last year, he emerged as a major backer of the regime.
The United States has issued new sanctions against Babak Zanjani, an infamous Iranian billionaire who is now allegedly helping Iran avoid previous sanctions and fund the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“Today’s action targets four individuals and nine entities tied to Zanjani’s operations,” said Tommy Pigott, a spokesperson for the US State Department, in a press release.
“Zanjani’s re-emergence as a regime-linked financier — despite previously receiving a death sentence in Iran for embezzlement — demonstrates the lengths to which Iranian state-affiliated elites will go to preserve access to the international financial system so that they can enrich themselves, even as they mismanage the Iranian economy,” Pigott added.
According to the US Treasury Department, Zanjani was sentenced to death for allegedly embezzling millions from the National Iranian Oil Company, but his sentence was commuted in 2024, and then last year, he emerged as a major backer of the regime.
“The Iranian regime continues to pay a steep economic price for its reckless behaviour, with the Rial plunging to another record low and inflation up massively,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
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Under President Trump’s leadership, the US Treasury will continue cutting off economic access for corrupt Iranian regime elites, along with their financiers and facilitators, he added.
The sanctions target Zanjani’s Dot One conglomerate, which the US asserts is involved in everything from telecommunications and transportation to airlines and digital assets, like cryptocurrency.
EU sanctions Iranian judges, hacker heading cyber group
The European Union on Friday announced sanctions on five Iranian judges, as well as a leading cyber group figure, for human rights offenses.
The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said that though the world’s focus is on the Middle East conflict, Iran’s repression against its own people cannot be overlooked.
“While the world’s attention is on the war in the Middle East, we can’t lose sight of Iran’s repression against its own people,” Kallas said in a post on X.
The European Council said in a statement that it was including five judges of Iran’s regional Revolutionary courts who have presided over trials targeting religious minorities and political dissidents on the basis of vaguely defined national security and religious charges.
“They have imposed death sentences and long prison sentences, flogging, fines or supplementary punishments on political dissidents and human rights activists,” the statement added.
The council further said that it was also targeting an Iranian hacker and computer engineer named Nima Salehi, who is the founder and a leading figure within the ‘Ashiyane’ cyber group, which cooperates closely with the EU-listed Cyber Police (FATA) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and is responsible for intensive cyber-attacks on both domestic opponents and reformists and foreign institutions, thereby assisting the regime’s crackdown against the opposition.
