WASHINGTON-Today, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated BitBank, a priority digital assets venture controlled by OFAC-designated Iranian financier Babak Zanjani (Zanjani), as part of Operation Economic Outcast, the Trump Administration’s whole-of-government economic campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its enablers. Today’s designations also include BitBank’s developer, Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company (Pishtaz Simorgh) and three associates of Zanjani: Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein,Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein, and Seyed Adel Heidari. The entities and individuals designated today are key components of the Iranian regime’s digital assets-based sanctions evasion infrastructure.
“Today’s designations of Iranian digital asset infrastructure make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond OFAC’s reach,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. “If you support the Iranian regime, the Department of the Treasury will sanction you.”
Since June of this year, OFAC-designated Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority has used BitBank to transfer payments it received to the Iranian regime. The action directly strikes at the architecture Zanjani built to launder funds and transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, including digital asset platforms and their supporting developers.