The U.S. Department of Justice said the seized oil from Iran was sold and the money would go to the U.S. State Victims of Terrorism Fund.
The United States has sold more than a million barrels of Iranian fuel seized under its sanctions program last year, a Justice Department official said, as another ship with Iranian crude oil sails to the port of Iran. SA.
The arrests are part of Washington’s tough economic sanctions on Tehran imposed over its nuclear program and the U.S. designation of several Iranian groups as “terrorists”, following decades of rancor between both countries. Iran denies US allegations of injustice.
In a new approach last year, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration used civil forfeiture methods to seize some 1.2 million barrels of gasoline they claimed was being shipped from Iran to Venezuela aboard four tankers.
The consignments, Washington’s largest seizure of fuel from Iran to date, were diverted to other vessels and sent to the U.S., where the fuel should have been sold and the money distributed to a fund for cargo. the U.S. suffered from “state-aided terrorism”.
Justice Department Marc Raimondi told Reuters news agency this week that the sale of the cargo had been completed, saying the government was “still working out the final costs”.
“The petrol has been seized, and intermediary sales have retained the monetary value of the petrol, which is now held by the U.S. Marshals Service,” he said. The value of the gasoline was unknown but it appeared to be worth tens of millions of dollars based on European gasoline benchmark prices.
Raimondi said the department still needs the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC to issue a restraining order “and then the money will be transferred to the State Victims’ Terrorist Trust Trust Fund. SA “.
The fund was set up by the U.S. government in 2015 to provide compensation to individuals who have suffered harm as a result of the acts of those whom the U.S. has designated as “supporters of a state of terrorism”.
Last week, the U.S. filed a lawsuit to seize another cargo, this one of crude oil it claims came from Iran – rather than Iraq, as it was called. the bill lies – in violation of U.S. terrorism rules.
That cargo, loaded onto a Liberian-flagged Achilleas tanker, was last reported in Caribbean waters. The U.S. Gulf port of Galveston, Texas was its destination with a scheduled arrival on Feb. 15, Refinitiv ship tracking data showed Wednesday.
Pilots’ groups in Galveston and Houston, Texas said it had not been known what Achilleas came from or which representative will handle the cargo.
Iran has not yet commented on the tanker.
Relations between Washington and Tehran worsened under Trump. His administration withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, imposed more sanctions on Tehran and killed the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force in an air strike in January 2020.
U.S. President Joe Biden is backing a return to diplomacy with Iran if it comes to complying with the 2015 nuclear deal. But this week he said the U.S. will not lift sanctions Iran’s economic move to get Tehran back to the negotiating table to discuss how they can revive the agreement.