Iran finding some ways to evade sanctions: U.S. Treasury Department

TEHRAN,Jan.13(MNA) – Despite onerous sanctions against Iran, the country is still finding some ways to bypass them, the Treasury Department said on Thursday, describing what it called an “emerging threat” to the effectiveness of the sanctions effort, according to the New York Times. Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which supervises American enforcement of the sanctions, said the Iranians were using private exchange houses and trading companies in other countries, relying on the paperless practice known as hawala, common in parts of the Middle East and Asia, in which money is transferred informally through trustworthy couriers. Mr. Szubin’s office issued an advisory on Thursday aimed at informing American financial institutions about what it called Iranian evasion techniques to circumvent the sanctions, which have been greatly intensified partly in response to Iran’s nuclear program. Iran says the program is for peaceful use, while some Western nations suspect it is meant to develop the ability to make nuclear weapons. The most vexing sanctions against Iran are financial prohibitions that have blacklisted many Iranian banks and denied them access to international money and credit channels. A new law signed by President Obama this month expands the sanctions to include shipping, shipbuilding and energy concerns. In a conference call with reporters, Mr. Szubin said the sanctions had left Iran “almost without recourse through ordinary banking channels.” At the same time, he said, “Iran is adapting.” “Increasingly we’re seeing them turn to trading houses in third countries,” he said, “to facilitate movement of money that would ordinarily go through a bank.” The practice of hawala, he said, is much more difficult to monitor and disrupt. “That said, hawalas are even less perfect substitutes for banks,” he said. “It’s a mechanism that only works if you have absolute trust of the individuals involved.” Mr. Szubin declined to quantify the total amount of money he said Iran had amassed despite the sanctions. Nor would he identify the trading houses — or even the countries — where circumventions have been carried out, but said “we are pursuing a number of cases.” He also said the transactions in question were often in the tens of thousands of dollars range and denominated in dollars, euros, British pounds and yen. Larger sums, he said, would be more likely to attract attention. “This is an evolving and emerging threat,” he said. “Two years ago we saw little of this because Iran was able to find banks that were able to handle its business.”