America admits to seizing Iran’s oil shipment

According to Energy Press, on Friday local time, after more than a year and a half, the US Department of Justice officially admitted to the seizure of Iran’s oil shipment.

The US Department of Justice, published on Friday local time, announced the successful seizure of a multi-million dollar shipment of crude oil linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was bound for another country.

The statement of the US Department of Justice states: This is the first criminal verdict in history that convicts a company for facilitating the illegal sale and transportation of Iranian oil and seizes more than 980,000 barrels of smuggled crude oil.

According to court documents, on April 19, Suez Rajan Limited admitted to violating the US International Emergency Economic Powers Act. On the same date, the company was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols to a three-year corporate ban and a fine of approximately $2.5 million. The contraband is currently being held in the District of Columbia District Court.

The statement of the Department of Justice of the United States states: The United States of America has claimed in its complaint that the ship’s oil be confiscated based on the laws of terrorism and money laundering of the United States.

The US Department of Justice has claimed: This complaint indicates a plan that includes several entities affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force to secretly sell and transfer Iranian oil to a customer abroad. The participants in this scheme attempted to conceal the origin of the oil by using ship-to-ship transfers, false automatic identification system reports, forged documents, and other means. The complaint also states that the lessor of the ship used the American financial system to facilitate the transportation of Iranian oil.

The statement of the US Department of Justice states: This complaint also claims that oil is the assets of the IRGC and the Quds Force or constitutes their “source of influence”. These two institutions have been introduced by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations. Therefore, this oil shipment is considered a money laundering.

The statement also claimed: Funds successfully seized in connection with a state sponsor of terrorism may be allocated in whole or in part to the United States State Sponsored Terrorism Victims Fund. The National Security Agency and the FBI office in Minneapolis are investigating these cases.

It should be noted that on Friday (September 17), an American media in a report focused on the pressure of Congress and the creation of an anti-Iranian group to seize Iran’s oil cargo and the group’s claim that 300 other tankers were involved in the illegal transportation of Tehran’s oil and wrote that the American government finally Under the pressure of Congress, nearly one million barrels of Iranian crude oil have been seized and emptied from the tanker under the pretext of smuggling to China and violation of sanctions.

The New York Times newspaper has stated in this regard: The American government has confiscated nearly one million barrels of Iranian crude oil under the pretext of smuggling to China and violating sanctions and emptied them from the tanker. According to new court documents cited by the New York Times, American prosecutors have claimed that an oil smuggling operation took place regarding this cargo and that the tanker’s trackers were turned off, cargo records were falsified and other techniques were used to evade US sanctions. has been employed. While the court filings in the case were secret for months, elements of Rajan’s Suez tanker seizure were in the public eye.

This media further stated: This oil tanker was present on the coast of Texas for several months because the American government was having trouble finding a company willing to unload the cargo of this oil tanker. The problem prompted a bipartisan group of lawmakers to call on Biden last month to complete the shutdown, calling the delay “unacceptable” for fear of Iranian retaliation. The anti-Iranian group known as the Alliance Against Nuclear Iran, which includes many former US security officials and foreign governments, for the first time, citing satellite images, mentioned the possibility of the Suez Rajan ship carrying illegal oil in February 2022.

Mark Wallace, the group’s executive director and a former ambassador in the George W. Bush administration, said a Greek company that managed the ship eventually brought another ship to Texas to complete the unloading process. He praised Empire Navigation for being brave in the face of what he called “transnational intimidation by Iran” and “doing the right thing.”

He claimed that the time taken to solve this issue indicates a bigger problem and that his group has identified about 300 other oil tankers based on similar data, which are probably involved in Iranian oil smuggling.

Empire Navigation agreed in April to cooperate with the U.S. on the matter, while a subsidiary that manages the Suez Rajan tanker pleaded guilty to violating U.S. sanctions, court filings show. The oil was unloaded from this tanker while the US was negotiating with Iran for the release of blocked Iranian money and the exchange of prisoners.

Due to the relationship between the owners and operators of the Suez Rajan tanker with the Western economy, the US Department of Justice was able to take action in this regard. The ship was financed by a British shipping company called Fleetscape, which is backed by an American investment company called Oak Tree Capital Management.

According to court filings, in early February 2022, the Suez Rajan, then empty and operated by Empire Navigation, docked near Singapore and took a small amount of oil — about 4,000 barrels — from another vessel, the S Who received Brilliance?

After the anti-Iranian group known as Allied Against Nuclear Iran made accusations of smuggling and wrote to Oak Tree Capital Management, Empire Navigation Company stopped the ship from traveling to China and stopped it near Malaysia and publicly announced that It is investigating the illegal loading of Iranian oil.