Virginia Man Admits to Conspiring to Evade US Sanctions on Iran
Behrouz Mokhtari of McLean, Virginia, and Tehran pleaded guilty Jan. 9 to two conspiracies to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran "by engaging in business activities on behalf of Iranian entities" without getting a license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, DOJ announced. Mokhtari will forfeit money, property and assets obtained from the schemes, including a Campbell, California, home, and a money judgment of over $2.8 million, DOJ said. The defendant faces a maximum of five years in prison for each of the two conspiracy counts.
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From 2018 to 2020, Mokhtari held management positions or control of various businesses in Iran and the United Arab Emirates, dubbed "the FSR Network." The defendant and his co-conspirators used this network to "provide services to Iranian entities and engage in transactions involving Iranian petrochemical products, including refining petrochemical products and transporting them by sea," DOJ said. Mokhtari used UAE bank accounts, including Bitubiz, to complete the transactions in U.S. dollars.
Mokhtari confessed to using Bitubiz as a conduit for the FSR Network to hide that his transactions violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. Bitubiz used daily ledgers to record the transactions, crediting most of the amount to Ayegh Isfahan Manufacturing -- a firm in which Mokhtari and others had ownership interests, DOJ said.
From 2013 to 2017, Mokhtari also engaged in a separate conspiracy to "support illicit shipments of petrochemical products to and from Iran in violation of the Iranian sanctions," DOJ said. In this scheme, the defendant created a Panama-based company, East & West Shipping, to buy two liquid petroleum gas tanker vessels to ship Iranian petrochemical goods for the benefit of Iranian entities linked to the Iranian government.