An investigation in Iran revealed today (Monday) a sweeping scandal surrounding a covert mechanism for transferring oil revenues outside the international banking system. Senior officials in the country admitted that middlemen entrusted with managing the funds failed to return at least $1.6 billion, with some suspects fleeing the country.
4+At the center of the affair is a network of companies and intermediaries known in Iran as “trustees”—figures who were given responsibility for collecting and transferring Iranian oil revenues under international sanctions restrictions.
The head of Iran’s State Audit Organization, Zabiollah Khodaian, said Sunday on state television that a single middleman alone failed to return $200 million of the state’s money and then left the country. According to him, authorities have opened 59 criminal cases against company managers in the system, with some suspects arrested and others fleeing abroad.
4+According to reports in Iranian media, prosecutors requested international arrest warrants through Interpol against 15 fugitives connected to the network. The affair has sparked unusually harsh criticism even from figures close to Iran’s economic establishment. Majid Reza-Hariri, head of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce, publicly attacked the handling and asked how those middlemen were chosen and who vouched for them.
“The Affair Exposes Difficult Questions”
Hariri claimed that the request for international arrest warrants indicates that at least 15 middlemen considered trustworthy managed to escape with “billions of dollars” of state funds. According to him, there must be an examination of who appointed those figures and why no action was taken against those who approved their activities.
4+Hariri’s estimate has not been independently verified, but his words join growing criticism in Iranian media regarding how people who received access to oil revenues on a massive scale allegedly managed to disappear with the money.
A Mechanism Born from Sanctions
The “trustees” system developed following international sanctions that restricted Iranian banks’ activities in the global arena. Due to the difficulty of transferring payments through official channels, Iran relied on middlemen with access to companies and bank accounts in foreign countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Oman.
4+But the mechanism operated mostly outside the transparency and oversight frameworks standard in the international financial system. In Iran, there is no clear legal definition of the status of those middlemen, and it is not publicly known how they were selected, what guarantees were required of them, and how authorities supervised their activities. Critics argue that the structure created an opening for conflicts of interest, since oil revenues could remain in the middlemen’s accounts for days and even weeks before being transferred to the state.
Questions About Government Oversight
The affair also raises questions regarding the authorities’ responsibility for oversight. Iranian Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said previously that the Oil Ministry’s responsibility ends with marketing and selling the oil, while the Central Bank is responsible for determining deposit accounts and transferring the funds.
4+Figures in Iran continue to claim that the middlemen are essential as long as sanctions prevent the state from operating fully through the international banking system. However, the current investigation has turned a mechanism that was hidden for years into a significant public scandal, raising questions about the Islamic Republic’s management of oil revenues.