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WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (AP) — The Biden administration is imposing sanctions on a prominent Turkish businessman said to be close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for violating U.S. Restrictions on Iranian oil sales.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced Thursday that it would punish Sitki Ayan and companies controlled by him, his family and associates for facilitating the sale of Iranian oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Ayan and his company also laundered proceeds from those sales for the Guards and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, both of which are designated “foreign terrorist organizations” by the United States, the Treasury Department said.
The sanctions include freezing any assets that Ayan or the targeted companies may have in U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting U.S. persons from doing any business with them.
“Ayan’s company has entered into contracts with foreign buyers for the international sale of Iranian oil, arranged for the shipment of the oil, and facilitated money laundering, obscuring the oil’s Iranian origin and (the Guard’s) interest in the sale,” Treasury said in a statement. said the statement.
It said Ayan, his son Bahaddin and three associates organized the sale of Iranian oil through Ayan’s Gibraltar-based ASB Group of Companies Limited, in violation of US sanctions against customers in China, other East Asian countries, the United Arab Emirates and some European holding groups.
ASB owns or controls numerous companies in Turkey, Cyprus, India and the Marshall Islands. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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