OFAC

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday imposed sanctions on Iraq’s deputy oil minister, three senior leaders of Iran-aligned militias, and four Iraqi companies, accusing them of diverting Iraqi oil to benefit Iran’s government and its proxy forces.

China’s top financial regulator has quietly told the country’s largest banks to suspend new loans to five Chinese refiners recently sanctioned by the United States over their ties to Iranian oil, even as Beijing publicly orders companies to ignore those same U.S. measures.

Small, little-known Chinese companies are openly marketing and shipping engines, batteries, fiber-optic cables, and other dual-use components to Iranian and Russian drone factories despite U.S. sanctions.

China has for the first time invoked a law targeting companies that comply with foreign sanctions Beijing rejects, escalating its pushback against U.S. blacklisting of several oil refineries over purchases of Iranian crude.

President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order authorizing penalties against foreign banks and other companies anywhere in the world that do business with the Cuban government. 

Russia has emerged as Syria’s dominant oil supplier, with shipments rising about 75 percent to roughly 60,000 barrels per day this year despite Damascus’s pivot toward the West and lingering public anger over Moscow’s military backing of ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.

The United States imposed sanctions on former Democratic Republic of the Congo President Joseph Kabila, accusing him of supporting armed groups that Washington says have fueled conflict and instability in eastern Congo.

OFAC designated 35 entities and individuals it said help run Iran’s shadow-banking system, focusing on private companies known as “rahbars” that move money for sanctioned Iranian banks through foreign shell companies and front-company accounts.

Tether froze more than $344 million in USDT across two addresses Thursday in coordination with the U.S. authorities, the stablecoin issuer announced, in one of the largest compliance actions in the company’s history.

U.S. officials on Wednesday struck at Southeast Asian scam compounds defrauding Americans and a global fentanyl supply chain, announcing criminal charges, sanctions, and the seizure of hundreds of fraudulent websites in a pair of coordinated enforcement actions.