U.S. Files Suit Seeking $47M from Sale of Iranian Oil Hidden in Croatia
The United States is continuing its “maximum pressure” against the Iranian oil industry reporting it has filed a new civil forfeiture in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to seize $47 million from the proceeds of oil sales. It is part of a long-running campaign by the U.S. targeting Triliance Petrochemical Co., a Hong Kong-based broker with branches in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, China, and Germany, that the U.S. says is a well-known Iranian front company supporting the Iranian regime’s petrochemical industry.
Triliance was first sanctioned by the United States in January 2020 on charges that it helps to finance Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and its terrorist proxies. The U.S. said it had traced transactions in 2019 shipping oil to the UAE and China and transferring millions of dollars to Iran from the sale of oil which Trilance worked to conceal the Iranian origin of these products.
Today’s suit details an elaborate scheme between 2022 and 2024 to facilitate the shipment, storage, and sale of Iranian petroleum products. U.S. prosecutors contend Iran was working to increase the marketability of Iranian oil in Europe and create future demand from European buyers.
U.S. Attorney Edward Martin said the suit was to show Iran that avoiding sanctions “is not as easy as playing a shell game with tankers.” The filing alleges in January 2022 Iran loaded approximately one million barrels of oil to a tanker that would later be sanctioned by the U.S.
After leaving Iran, the U.S. traced the oil including through three ship-to-ship transfers before it was offloaded for storage in Croatia. The U.S. alleges companies working with Triliance falsified documents and manipulated tanker AIS signals to conceal the origins and claim the oil came from Malaysia. Further, it is alleged that the facilitators paid the storage fees in U.S. dollars through U.S. financial institutions that would have refused the transactions had they known they were associated with Iranian oil. The oil was ultimately sold with the U.S. reporting proceeds of $47 million which the U.S. is moving to seize.
It is not the first time the U.S. has targeted Trilance and the proceeds of sales. In November 2024, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ordered the forfeiture of nearly $12 million connected with Triliance. Government lawyers highlighted a series of transactions and money transfers in 2020 linked to Triliance. In 2022, the U.S. had also gone after oil producers that it said were working with Triliance.