Sanctions Evasion

A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday granted a 90-day pause in the criminal case against Turkey’s state-run Halkbank, a first step toward a possible dismissal of charges that the bank helped launder billions of dollars in Iranian oil and gas proceeds.

Senate Democrats are pressing for a congressional hearing on the Trump administration’s decision to ease sanctions on Russian oil, arguing that the step could benefit Moscow even as the Kremlin is providing support for Iranian forces.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Iran’s use of Binance to evade U.S. sanctions, according to new reporting by The Wall Street Journal. 

The Justice Department released its first department-wide corporate enforcement policy for criminal matters, establishing a uniform framework for how prosecutors handle corporate cases across the department, except antitrust matters. 

Russian military veterans, including former Wagner mercenaries and men linked to the GRU, have been deployed aboard tankers in Moscow’s “shadow fleet” moving sanctioned oil through the Baltic Sea.

The U.S. Justice Department is poised to resolve its long-running criminal case against Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank through a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA).

A German logistics company has exploited gaps in European postal and customs rules to move sanctioned goods from Germany to Russia, undermining the EU’s effort to choke off supplies to Moscow.

The United Arab Emirates is considering freezing billions of dollars in Iranian assets held in the Gulf state, a move that could sharply restrict Tehran’s access to foreign currency and global trade networks.

Artificial intelligence is making sanctions and export-control evasion schemes harder to detect by enabling the creation of realistic fake companies and phony documentation used to obviate international trade restrictions.

As the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran continues, there’s a bit of split-screen in Iranian online activity at the moment. On the one screen, crypto usage has spiked sharply since the launch of the attacks. On the other, most of Iran’s state-sponsored cyber groups are nowhere to be found.