Updated Sunday, February 4, 2024-22:48

The financial newspaper

Financial Times

published this Sunday that Iran used two of the largest banks in the United Kingdom to move money without being discovered around the world. These movements would be part of a great plan to evade the sanctions imposed by the US and would be supported by Tehran's intelligence services.

According to this investigation,

Lloyds and Santander UK

provided accounts to British shell companies that actually belonged to a sanctioned Iranian petrochemical company based near Buckingham Palace.

The Petrochemical Commercial Company (PPC), controlled by the Iranian state, actually belongs, according to the British newspaper, to a network that the United States accuses of raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and working with Russian intelligence agencies to raise money for Iranian militias.

Both this petrochemical company and its British subsidiary, PCC UK, have been subject to US sanctions since November 2018. Documents, emails and accounting records show that during this time PCC's UK division has continued to operate from an office in Grosvenor Gardens , in the London neighborhood of Belgravia, using "a complex network of front entities in Britain and other countries."

The documents analyzed by the

Financial Times

show that, since coming under US sanctions, PCC "has used companies in the United Kingdom to receive funds from Iranian front entities in China, while concealing its real ownership through "trust agreements." "and nominated directors."

One of these companies, called

Pisco UK

, is registered in a detached house in Surrey and uses a business account with Santander UK. According to the UK corporate register, Pisco UK is wholly owned by a British citizen named

Abdollah-Siauash Fahimi

. However, internal documents, some of which have been leaked online by the Iranian opposition website WikiIran, show that Pisco is fully controlled by the PCC and that Fahimi signed an agreement to own the company in trust in the name of the.

In 2021, Pisco's account at Banco Santander received a transfer from a Chinese company called

Black Tulip

, which according to internal PCC records is another trust company controlled by a PCC employee.

Asked by the

FT

, Santander said it could not comment on specific customer relationships but was "very focused on sanctions compliance". And according to the newspaper, which cites a source close to the operation, the entity has already closed Pisco's account.

Another PCC front company in the UK is

Aria Associates,

which has an account with

Lloyds

. It is officially owned by Mohamed Ali Rejal, who, according to internal emails, is the deputy chief executive of PCC UK and has regularly communicated with company officials in Tehran, according to the British newspaper.