The US Treasury Department has, for the first time, sanctioned cryptocurrency exchanges for operating in Iran’s financial sector.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions against Zedcex and Zedxion, both registered in the United Kingdom, as part of a broader crackdown on Iranian authorities after their brutal suppression of an internal uprising that killed thousands of its own citizens.
According to the Treasury statement, the exchanges facilitated transactions for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which the United States and its allies in the European Union designate as a terrorist organization. Since its registration in 2022, one of them alone processed more than $94 billion in transactions, the Treasury said.
The two platforms are also linked to Babak Morteza Zanjani, an Iranian businessman once convicted of embezzling billions from Iran’s national oil company. OFAC alleges that Zanjani used the exchanges to help move funds for the regime, including proceeds to support entities linked to the IRGC.
Earlier this month it was discovered that the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) had purchased more than $500 million of Tether’s USDT stablecoin, with the primary goal of manipulating currency markets as the value of the rial plummeted.
This designation marks a change. While OFAC has previously sanctioned individual crypto wallet addresses and technology providers linked to sanctions evasion or cybercrimes, this is the first time it has blacklisted entire exchange entities under Iran’s targeted financial sanctions authorities.
As a result of the designation, all exchange assets linked to the United States are now frozen and US persons and entities are prohibited from interacting with them.
