Tehran, Feb 5: Two of the UK’s largest banks, Lloyds Bank and Santander UK, were involved in an Iran-backed sanctions evasion scheme involving money transfers through a series of front entities, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Monday, citing bank transaction documents.
Iran’s state-owned Petrochemical Commercial Company (PCC) and its UK subsidiary have been under US sanctions since November 2018, but this has not stopped the UK branch from operating, the newspaper reported.
The company’s eponymous subsidiary used various front entities to receive payments from Iranian front companies in China while hiding its true ownership, the report said.
One such entity called Pisco UK used a business account at Santander UK and was officially owned by a British citizen, but was controlled by the PCC, according to leaked files from the Iranian opposition website WikiIran.
UK company records showed that the citizen was a director of PCC UK and corresponded with an office in Tehran.
The same was true of Lloyds Bank, whose services were used by Aria Associates, which the newspaper said was also considered a pro-Iranian front in the UK.
The findings came to light amid ongoing US and UK strikes on Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, who are believed to be backed by Iran, the newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, the United States accuses Iran’s PCC, the owner of the UK-based front entities, of raising money for an elite branch of the Iranian armed forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and working to raise money for Iranian proxy militias.
The Houthis vowed in November to attack any ships associated with Israel until it halts military actions in the Gaza Strip.
This led US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin to announce the creation of a multinational operation to secure navigation in the Red Sea.
The United States and the United Kingdom later launched major strikes against Houthi positions in a bid to degrade the rebels’ ability to target commercial vessels.
(UNI)
