For Iran's Ruling Families, Corruption and Blockade Busting Run Deep
A new investigation using covert tip-offs from disgruntled insiders within Iran has revealed further connections between close relatives of hardline Iranian political leaders and the sanctions-busting activities from which they personally profit, often at the expense of the Iranian state.
US Treasury sanctions notifications have highlighted the activities of two particularly famous “nepo” sons of prominent Iranian hardliners: Mohammed Hossein Shamkani, son of the late Iranian National Security Advisor Ali Shamkani; and Babak Zanjani, who is intermarried both with the family of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and also his son Mojtaba, supposedly the current Supreme Leader. They have both made billions by heading up commercial networks that sell Iranian oil exports through sanctions evasion schemes.
Typically, such black-market entrepreneurs have assistance through their family connections with false passports, travel arrangements and financial transactions, but their route to riches is to be entrusted with selling Iranian oil for export through their networks of front companies and dark fleet tankers. While the arbitrage between the discounted price of Iranian oil for export and what it can be sold for would provide profit enough for most, the likes of Mohammed Hossein Shamkani and Babak Zanjani also profit by avoiding payments due to the Iranian Ministries of Oil and Finance. The Iranian ministries are particularly vulnerable to non-payment as the foreign transactions of these networks get “lost” as they are routed through opaque and unorthodox payments systems designed to avoid scrutiny and effective accounting.
The latest investigation mounted against these activities by Iran International relies heavily on tip-offs from Iranians working within ministries who are upset that the Islamic Republic is being cheated by the sons of their very own religious and political elite. If the findings and allegations made in the Iran International investigations are proven to be accurate and corroborated, sanctions notices from the US Treasury tend to follow.
Gholamreza Tajgardoun, the head of the Budget Committee in the Iranian Majlis, told law-makers that in 2025 the government only received $13 billion from oil sales worth $21 billion even at discounted prices, the missing $8 billion having been purloined by “trustee” middlemen such as Shamkani and Zanjani.
Iran International has identified a “trustee” oil trading syndicate operating within the Iranian Intelligence Ministry which it has named the Shayan Network, after the Intelligence Ministry’s Director-General for Fuel and Energy. Shayan is one of three director-generals in the ministry directing the syndicate, which is believed to have purloined $11 billion.
One of the “trustees” executing the business of the syndicate is Ali Rezaei, son of hardliner Mohsen Rezaei recently appointed Secretary of the National Security Council and formerly in charge of the IRGC. Ali Rezaei is married into the family of Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
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Other “trustees” run the day-to-day shipping and trading business of the Shayan Network, usually operating from offices in Dubai. They include Rouhollah Razavi, married into the family of Paydari spokesman Majid Mottaghifar; Ehsan Tahayori, owner of the Arz Iran currency exchange and son of 1980’s IRGC Brigadier General Shams-Ali Tahayor; and Ehsan Sakhaei, son-in-law of former Minister of Intelligence Mahmoud Alavi.
The judicial authorities in Iran are believed to have laid charges against many of the “trustees” of the Shayan Network, but the network is one of several operated by well-connected Iranians that operate in similar fashion. With the US naval blockade preventing the physical shipment of oil which these networks used to handle, many will be in disarray because of unfulfilled obligations. Iranian courts are also piling on the pressure, knowing that the activities of well-connected trustees undermine what little confidence the Iranian population still has in their supposedly religious Velayat-e Faqih leaders. The final nail in the coffin for the networks may well be the type of US Treasury sanctions action that in effect has bankrupted the SeaLead Shipping container line, which had been heavily used as a shipping conduit by Hossein Shamkani’s network.
