USA Law and Practice Contributed by: Bruce G. Paulsen, Brian Maloney and Hannah Thibideau, Seward & Kissel LLP
Iraq. In reality, the company was a conduit for oil from Iran to enter the market. Specifically, OFAC determined that AEL ignored sev - eral red flags that the LPG actually originated from Iran, including that AEL was put on notice: • of third-party concerns that cargos supplied by their counterparty may have originated in Iran; • of evidence that shipments of cargo did not actu - ally originate from Oman and were falsified; • that the prices AEL received from the company were significantly below market rate; and • that payments owed to the company were stopped due to sanctions concerns. OFAC determined that AEL did not take sufficient Criminal sanctions enforcement activity conducted by the DOJ in the past few years has invariably focused on the US government’s most urgent national security and foreign policy goals. Some of the most notable actions involving sanctions breaches include the fol - lowing. steps to evaluate these red flags. 2.2.4 Criminal Enforcement Action • The DOJ’s investigation into Binance’s violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), failure to register as a money transmitting business, and sanctions viola - tions under IEEPA resulted in Binance agreeing to pay over USD4 billion. • Sanctions evasion actions were brought against associates and service providers of Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. The group of actions included a 2023 action brought against an associ - ate charged with conspiring to make prohibited payments to maintain four real estate properties and to attempt to sell two of those properties; and a criminal resolution with a New York attorney charged with involvement in facilitating payments on Vekselberg properties. • Indictments of persons connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as part of the US government’s broader efforts to use US sanc - tions on Iran and related statutory authority to combat the illicit trafficking of Iranian oil, including the related seizure and civil forfeiture of more than
500,000 barrels of Iranian oil announced by the DOJ in February 2024. • On 20 March 2026, the DOJ announced that Tomás Niembro Concha, the former CEO of Nodus Inter - national Bank, pled guilty to a scheme involving bank fraud and conspiring to evade US sanctions against Venezuela, including transactions involving Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA. The DOJ emphasised that the conduct involved unlaw - ful dealings with sanctioned persons, and threat - ened US national security interests. • In June 2026, federal authorities arrested Jamshid Ghomi, a dual US-Iranian citizen and CEO of the Iran-based technology company Faraz Pardaz Ray - aneh (FPR). Ghomi was charged with conspiracy to violate IEEPA for allegedly procuring and supply - ing US-origin networking, security and encryption equipment for Iranian customers in breach of US sanctions. If convicted, Ghomi faces a maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment. Looking ahead, despite a deregulatory initiative in the digital assets sector, there is also continued recent enforcement activity on the part of the DOJ to pros - ecute wilful sanctions violations, and other criminal conduct, on the part of bad actors in the cryptocur - rency industry. Separately and in a notable example of leniency, the DOJ also decided in June 2025 not to prosecute a private equity firm, White Deer Management LLC, that had acquired portfolio company Unicat Catalyst Technologies LLC (“Unicat”). This was based on White Deer’s prompt voluntary self-disclosure of Unicat’s violations to the DOJ’s National Security Division. 2.2.5 Mitigation OFAC’s Sanctions Enforcement Guidelines provide numerous factors that OFAC can consider when determining the appropriate administrative response to apparent violations of US sanctions by a person who is obliged to comply with such sanctions (a “Sub - ject Person”), including whether any mitigation should be applied to avoid or reduce the base civil penalty amount, and whether a violation should be deemed “egregious” or “non-egregious”. This includes, in appropriate circumstances, a procedure to provide voluntary self-disclosure to OFAC.
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