Report: Tehran Used UK Banks to Evade Sanctions

The Islamic Republic of Iran has used two big UK banks to covertly move money around the world as part of a scheme to evade sanctions, the Financial Times reported.

According to documents seen by the British newspaper, Lloyds and Santander UK provided accounts to British front companies secretly owned by a sanctioned Iranian petrochemicals company based in London.

Both the state-controlled Petrochemical Commercial Company (PCC) and its British subsidiary, PCC UK, have been under US sanctions since 2018. 

But the FT cited documents, emails and accounting records as showing that PCC UK has continued to operate out of an office in central London by using front entities in Britain and other countries such as China. 

“This is, frankly, a shocking failure to act in lockstep with our allies to shut down the financing of a hostile regime,” said Liam Byrne, chair of the House of Commons Business and Trade Committee. “It beggars belief that a business sanctioned by the US is freely trading in London.” 

Lloyds and Spain-based Santander declined to specifically comment on the FT report, but said that they are committed to adhering to their legal and regulatory obligations.

The United States accuses PCC of being part of a network that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s (IRGC) expeditionary Quds Force and worked with Russian intelligence agencies to raise money for the Islamic Republic’s proxy militias.