The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit in a Washington, D.C., district court, aiming to forfeit $47 million in proceeds from the sale of nearly 1 million barrels of Iranian oil. This oil was transferred to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Qods Force, both of which have been designated as terrorist organizations by the United States.
The oil was seized by the U.S. last year and subsequently sold, resulting in the $47 million in revenue. According to the lawsuit, the sale was part of a broader scheme to evade U.S. sanctions between 2022 and 2024. The U.S. government detailed how various deceptive tactics were employed to disguise the oil’s origins and bypass sanctions, including manipulating tanker identification systems to conceal the oil’s departure from Iran.
The facilitators behind the operation also submitted falsified documents to a Croatian storage facility and port authority, falsely claiming the oil was from Malaysia. Storage fees for the oil were paid in U.S. dollars, with transactions processed through U.S. financial institutions that would have blocked the payments had they known the oil originated in Iran.
This sale is not the first instance of the U.S. selling Iranian oil seized under similar circumstances. In 2020, the U.S. seized and sold oil from four tankers bound for Venezuela, generating over $40 million in proceeds. The U.S. government has repeatedly argued that it is entitled to seize Iranian oil shipments because the revenue from these sales supports the IRGC, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S.