Iran was able to export US$2.8 billion in oil using American insurance services, bypassing sanctions
Iran was able to transport $2.8 billion of oil to customers in 2023 using insurance from a US-based company, despite sanctions imposed by the US Treasury on Iranian oil sales, a report found. investigation published Friday by the New York Times (NYT) .
The oil was transported aboard 27 tankers, using liability insurance obtained from the American Club of New York, all despite much-vaunted US sanctions . Oil tankers typically must have liability insurance to enter international ports, meaning the U.S. Treasury could have blocked the sale of this oil by asking the American Club to revoke the tankers' insurance.
The NYT says the 27 tankers were able to carry cargo on at least 59 voyages during 2023. The Treasury Department did not respond to a question from the newspaper asking whether it was aware that the ships had carried Iranian oil while they were insured by the American Club.
To identify the shipments, the NYT relied on tracking data provided by TankerTrackers.com, SynMax and Pole Star.
The investigation showed that the tankers were engaged in activities that suggested their involvement in evading US sanctions. The ships are owned by shell companies, are older than the average oil tanker and use “spoofing” to hide their location by hiding their transponder signal.
In response to the investigation, Daniel Tadros, COO of the American Club, said that it is difficult for his company to determine whether a tanker is carrying Iranian oil and that the US government should play a more significant role in investigating the activities that may violate its sanctions.
“It is impossible for us to know every day what exactly each ship does, where it goes, what it carries, who the owners are,” Tedros said. “I would like to think that governments have a lot more capacity, manpower and resources to follow up on them.”
A US Treasury spokesperson said: “Treasury remains focused on targeting Iran's sources of illicit financing, including exposing tax evasion networks and disrupting billions of dollars in revenue.”
US lawmakers have criticized White House officials for their failure to curb Iranian oil sales and for releasing billions of dollars in Iranian oil proceeds seized as part of a prisoner swap this summer.
Republican lawmakers argue that Iran was able to use funds from the unblocked oil sales to support “terrorism.”
This is nothing other than the most recent failure of US economic sanctions and of a policy based on the use of commercial and monetary weapons to such an extent that they are almost blunt. News had even recently leaked out of an oil tanker that had managed to bring sanctioned Russian oil to the USA.
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The article Iran was able to export US$2.8 billion in oil using American insurance services, bypassing sanctions comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/liran-e-stato-in-grado-di-esportare-28-miliardi-di-usd-in-petrolio-usando-servizi-assicurativi-americani-aggirando-le-sanzioni/ on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 08:00:21 +0000.