Special to WorldTribune.com

WASHINGTON — The United States has alerted financial institutions to
Iran’s attempts to evade sanctions.

The Treasury Department said Iran was using exchange houses and trading
companies to acquire revenues through illegal business transactions.

Officials said the fronts were established in several countries, with money transfers reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

“The practices involve the use of third-country exchange houses or
trading companies that are acting as money transmitters to process funds transfers through the United States in support of business with Iran,” Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said.

In an advisory on Jan. 10, Treasury outlined ways to detect Iranian
attempts to evade sanctions, particularly access to foreign currency.
One method involved repeated attempts to send payments by a financial institution through the United States.

“Increasingly we’re seeing them turn to trading houses in third
countries to facilitate movement of money that would ordinarily go through a bank,” OFAC director Adam Szubin said. “Iran is adapting.”

Szubin told a conference call that the administration of President
Barack Obama was tracking Iranian efforts to evade sanctions. He said
Treasury, which imposed more than $2 billion in fines since 2005, was
following several financial institutions that worked with
Teheran to acquire dollars and euros.

Teheran was said to be employing hawala, the exchange of services and
credit without the transfer of cash. Officials said hawala, widely used in
the Gulf and South Asia, was difficult to stop.

“This is an evolving and emerging threat,” Szubin said. “Two years ago
we saw little of this because Iran was able to find banks that were able to
handle its business.”

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