Bikers wait in a queue to refuel their tanks at a gas station, in Venezuela, in June.
Photo: federico parra/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesU.S. federal prosecutors filed suit late Wednesday to seize four tankers-worth of gasoline Iran is sailing to Venezuela, the latest salvo in the administration’s effort to stifle flows of goods and money helping to keep two of its top foes in power.
By filing a civil-forfeiture complaint, U.S. prosecutors aim to not only prevent delivery of the Iranian fuel to Venezuela, which began the journey last month, but also deprive Tehran of the revenues from the cargo and deter future shipments.
The action is the latest in a series of moves the U.S. has taken against Iran and its ally Venezuela, as part of a broad operation to pressure the governments in Tehran and Caracas to meet U.S. demands.
Zia Faruqui, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, alleged in the suit that an Iranian businessman affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s elite military unit designated by the U.S. as a terror group, arranged the fuel deliveries through a network of shell companies to avoid detection and evade U.S. sanctions.
Proceeds from oil sales through Revolutionary Guard agents, “support the IRGC’s full range of nefarious activities, including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, support for terrorism, and a variety of human rights abuses, at home and abroad,” Mr. Faruqui said in the filing.
Iranian businessman Mahmoud Madanipour used firms based in the United Arab Emirates to handle the sales, falsifying the fuel’s origin and arranging for dangerous mid-sea, ship-to-ship transfers, federal investigators said. Mr. Madanipour had also sought to arrange deliveries to China and Malaysia, the U.S. investigators said.
Mr. Madanipour, his U.A.E.-based company and the Iranian mission to the United Nations didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The suit comes after diplomatic overtures and public and private warnings to companies involved in the shipping sector regarding the ramifications of dealing with Iran and Venezuela. The U.S. pressure campaign has resulted in plummeting energy exports for both countries, analysts say.
U.S. officials said a flotilla of nine tankers were involved in the latest operation. Initially U.S. officials coerced four privately-owned tankers—the Bella, the Luna, the Pandi and the Bering—to abandon the flotilla, as detailed by The Wall Street Journal.
But communications cited in the case suggest the individuals arranging for the fuel deliveries may have found a way to circumvent the U.S. pressure. “The ship owner doesn’t want to go because of the American threat,” said one of the co-conspirators in a text message to Mr. Madanipour, according to U.S. investigators. “But we want him to go, and we even agreed we will also buy the ship,” the text message continued.
The filing also suggests Iran still has financial ties to the outside world despite the U.S. pressure campaign. A representative acting on behalf of Chinese buyers allegedly asked Mr. Madanipour if payments for Iranian crude could be made in other countries, suggesting Oman or Dubai, U.A.E., as options, as a way to avoid U.S. sanctions. “We can get payment in Oman, UAE, Turkey, Italy and Germany,” Mr. Madanipour allegedly replied.
The suit underscores a key vulnerability of sanctions evaders: Their need to access the U.S. financial system to pay for shipping services, often through offshore jurisdictions.
The same network that Mr. Madanipour used to arrange the Venezuela deliveries was also used for other illicit business dealings, according to U.S. prosecutors.
Last August, a U.S. court unsealed a warrant for the seizure of the Grace 1, an Iranian oil tanker that had been seized by the U.K. in Gibraltar, alleging the shipments on the vessel benefited the Revolutionary Guard and illegally used the U.S. financial system. A Gibraltar court rejected the U.S. request to confiscate the tanker, which later offloaded its cargo into other vessels that delivered fuel to Syria in violation of U.S. sanctions, according to U.S. officials and industry analysts.
The Grace 1 is indirectly linked to at least one of the vessels targeted by the latest asset forfeiture. The U.S. alleges it is run by the Avantgarde Group, while the most recent complaint said an unnamed company invoiced Avantgarde $14.9 million for the sale of gasoline aboard the Pandi, one of the vessels named in Wednesday’s suit.
Write to Ian Talley at ian.talley@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com
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