Four US citizens charged with conspiracy to sell Iranian oil
The US Attorney's Office announced in a report on Wednesday that it has indicted four US citizens in connection with a conspiracy to sell Iranian oil.
Nicholas Huan, 34, of New York, Genevieve Wang, 39, Robert Twitz, 30, and Daniel Ray Lin, 39, all of Texas, are accused of conspiring to sell Iranian oil to China and receive millions of dollars in profits.
Assistant Attorney General John Demers and U.S. Attorney William McSwain for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced that the individuals are charged with conspiracy, violating Iranian oil sanctions, and money laundering by helping to sell Iranian oil to a refinery in China.
According to the report, the four defendants conspired to help Iran circumvent sanctions on Iranian oil by using front companies and resorting to bribery and forged documents to conceal their illegal activities.
The statement says that the United States will use all means to detect and prevent individuals from violating US sanctions, as such actions are a blow to US national security.
The United States withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and imposed severe sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Also, since May of last year, the United States has stopped granting sanctions exemptions for Iranian oil imports, and according to reports from international organizations and tanker tracking companies, Iran's daily oil exports have fallen from 2.5 million barrels to less than 300,000 barrels, most of which goes to China and Syria.
Meanwhile, tanker tracking company Tanker Trackers recently reported that Iran's oil exports are likely double what international organizations and companies estimate.
The report published images of 16 tankers secretly receiving Iranian oil from another tanker in the middle of the seas and oceans and sending it to international markets. Reports indicate that Iran sells some of its oil to China under the name of oil from countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.
The United States has so far added dozens of companies, tankers, and foreign citizens to its blacklist for violating Iranian oil sanctions.
Mr. McSwain said that the actions of these four American citizens amounted to obtaining wealth at the cost of insulting the national and security interests of the United States of America. He strongly criticized the efforts of these four American citizens to help China and Iran violate US sanctions.
According to the indictment, these individuals conspired to purchase Iranian oil and sell it to China in Philadelphia and other areas between May 2019 (when the US ended oil exemptions for Iranian customers) and February 2020.
According to this report, the individuals sought to conceal the origin and source of the oil they were selling to China by using shell companies, fake documents, and receipts, and to conceal the source of their profits from these transactions with the help of shell companies, obtaining passports from Antigua and Barbuda (located in the eastern Caribbean Sea), and using Swiss banks to launder money.
The report says that the individuals in question were arrested in February of this year. They had planned to sell two Iranian oil shipments per month, earning them $28 million in profit from each shipment.
These individuals may be sentenced to up to 45 years in prison.
Source: Radio Farda
