Iran used Lloyds and Santander UK, two of Britain’s largest banks. for The Financial Times has revealed that money is secretly moving around the world. This is a maneuver within Tehran’s intelligence-backed plan to evade economic sanctions. Lloyds and Santander UK provided accounts to British front companies secretly owned by the Petrochemical Trading Company, an Iranian petrochemical company operating from a headquarters near Buckingham Palace. That company is controlled by Tehran and was part of a network the United States accuses of raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the Quds Force, a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that specializes in asymmetric warfare, and of working with Russian intelligence agencies. To raise money for Iranian ‘proxy’ militias. Both the Petrochemical Commercial Company and its British subsidiary have been under US sanctions since November 2018.
Based on accounting records and numerous emails sent, the Financial Times revealed that the Iranian firm has been using British companies since the imposition of US sanctions. Receiving funds from Iranian front organizations based in China, while concealing beneficial ownership through “trust agreements” and nominee directors. One of these companies, Pisco UK, is registered in the name of a detached house in Surrey (in the south-east of the country) and uses a business account with Santander UK.
United Kingdom It all belongs to a British citizen named Abdollah-Siauash Fahimi.According to the British business register, but according to internal documents leaked online by Iranian dissident website Wikilran, the firm is entirely controlled by the Petrochemical Trading Company and Fahimi signed a deal to secure the company in his name. Fahimi, a former director of Petrochemical Commercial Company UK from April 2021 to February 2022, used a chemical company email address to maintain contact with company officials in Tehran. Asked about this, Santander told British media that it could not comment on relationships with specific customers but that they were “very focused on complying with sanctions”. A company familiar with the situation confirmed the situation Closing Pisco account.